Infos for Students

Topics for Bachelor's or Master's theses

• How can Artificial Intelligence improve dietary assessment? Opportunities, challenges, and limitations.
  Traditional dietary assessment methods such as food diaries, 24-hour recalls, or food frequency questionnaires have been criticized for being laborious, tedious, and time-consuming, which leads to low response rates, poor compliance, and limited precision and validity. The recent development in artificial intelligence (AI) might mark a breakthrough in the development of dietary assessment tools, making data collection quicker, easier, and more precise.
  Therefore, the aim of this project is to review the recent contribution of AI to the development of dietary assessment tools and to identify opportunities, challenges, and limitations associated with these new approaches.
   
• Harnessing the potential of underutilized crops to promote sustainable food production
  In Europe, several nutrient-dense foods are not widely grown and consumed, despite their suitability to European climates and environments, and viability for sustainable production with lower inputs. Some of these underutilised crops such as rye or legumes are stress resilient and have the potential to supply key nutrients, improve diets and reduce the risk of diet-related diseases. Therefore, the EU funded COST Action DIVERSICROP aims to harmonise fragmented data and develop strategies for the sustainable cultivation of selected underutilized crops, striking a balance between agricultural sustainability and human nutritional value. The three target crops of the project are peas (Pisum sativum L.), rye (Secale cereale L.) and chickpeas (Cicer arietinum L.).
  In the context of DIVERSICROP, the aim of the project is to investigate trends in production and consumption of those target crops as well as their representation in Food-based Dietary Guidelines (with a focus on Germany and central Europe).
   
• Effectiveness of individual pieces of personalized nutrition advice in the Food4Me study
  Food4Me has been one of the largest studies focusing on the effect of personalized nutrition (PN) advice on individuals' dietary behavior. It was shown that PN produced larger and more appropriate changes in dietary behavior than a conventional approach. The respective effect size, however, was quite small.
  Therefore, the aim of this project is to investigate the effectiveness of the individual pieces of PN advice given to the subjects and to identify those recommendations that produced the most substantial and appropriate changes in the subjects' dietary behavior.
    
• Can Personalized Nutrition support the self-management for people with type 2 diabetes?
  People with chronic diseases need to actively manage their disease. In the case of type 2 diabetes, self-management comprises activities such as diet, physical activity, and medication.
  The aim of this project is to investigate to which extent and under which conditions diabetes self-management could benefit from Personalized Nutrition.
   
• Overview of algorithms in Personalized Nutrition (Currently in progress)
  Personalized Nutrition (PN) uses a subject's individual information to produce tailored dietary recommendations. In other terms, PN uses input data, feeds them into an algorithm, and obtains output data (i.e. personalized dietary recommendations). Examples of such algorithms are linear or quadratic programming, fuzzy optimizations, decision trees, or modern approaches of machine learning. 
  The aim of the project is to provide an overview of algorithms actually used for PN, be it in a scientific contest or in commercial applications. 
   
• Demystifying the myth about ultra-processed foods (Currently in progress)
  The concept of ultra-processed foods (UPF) and their impact on health is heavily debated. 
  Therefore, the aim of this project is to identify the scientific roots of the proposed health risks of UPF and find answers to the following questions: Why are UPF considered a health concern? Why is the definition of UPF based on the NOVA classification widely used, even though it is highly debated? Does the NOVA classification match the interests of any stakeholders?
   
• Food-based Dietary Guidelines from a consumer perspective (Currently in progress)
  Food-based Dietary Guidelines (FBDGs) are published to support healthy (and environment-friendly) food choices in a population. They are developed in the tug of war between desirability from a health and sustainability perspective and acceptability as well as feasibility from a consumer perspective. 
  Therefore, the aim of the project is to shed light on the question of how FBDGs should be designed such that consumers consider them convincing and feasible and are motivated to follow them.
   
• Re-evaluation of the Food-based Dietary Guidelines recently published by the German Nutrition Society
  The German Nutrition Society (DGE) considers its food-based dietary guidelines (FBDGs) as an important tool to foster the adoption of healthy eating behaviours. The latest version of the German FBDGs was published in March 2024. Their development was based on an innovative mathematical approach, not just taking into account nutrient intake recommendations, but also national dietary habits, health-associations of the consumption of certain foods (i.e. food-related DALYs), and sustainability aspects such as greenhouse gas emmissions (GHGE) and agricultural land use (LA).
  The aim of this project is to re-evaluate these FBGDs with respect to the uncertainty of the underlying data (e.g. food composition, DALYs, GHGE, LA) and the affordability of the recommended foods.
   
• The impact of the European Union's approval of entomophagy on the intention of young Nigerians to consume edible insects (Completed, summer 2024)
• Climate impact of Bavarian diets: Underlying food consumption patterns and the role of sociodemographic factors, subjective environmental awareness and eating motives (Completed, spring 2024)
• Influence of social media on the development of obesity and corresponding approaches for prevention and intervention (Completed, winter 2023/24)
• Validation of the use of ChatGPT as a source of reliable nutrition advice for healthy individuals (Completed, winter 2023/24) 
• Association of habitual dietary intake with parameters of skeletal muscle area and fat derived by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) A narrative review of sources of bias in nutritional epidemiology studies, and original data analysis (Completed, winter 2023/24)
• Personalized dietary recommendations for obese individuals – A comparison of ChatGPT and the Food4Me algorithm (Completed, winter 2023/24)
• Non-compliance of controls in unblinded dietary intervention studies (Completed, spring 2023)
• Verwendung von Nahrungsergänzungsmitteln in der dritten Bayerischen Verzehrsstudie (2021-2023) (Completed, spring 2023)
• Algorithmen zur Entwicklung lebensmittelbezogener Ernährungsempfehlungen. Überblick und Anwendungsbeispiele (Completed, spring 2023)
• Qualitative assessment of mobile nutrition apps by undergraduate students enrolled for "Life Sciences – Ernährungswissenschaft" (Completed, spring 2023)
• Information requirements for efficient personalized nutrition advice (Completed, autumn 2022)
• Food reformulation: Strategies and evidence (Completed, summer 2022)
• Strengths and weaknesses of photo-based dietary assessment tools (Completed, spring 2022)
• Integration of Behaviour Change Techniques within nutrition-related mobile apps (Completed, summer 2021)
• Impact of food choices on sustainability aspects of diets (Completed, spring 2021)
• Trends in energy intakes over the previous decades (Completed, winter 2021/22)
• Comparison of the nutritional situation in EC Member States based on FAO's Food Balance Sheets (Completed, winter 2021/22)
• Transformation of the results from an online FFQ into optimal user feedback (Completed, winter 2021/22)
• Nutritional situation in Colombia with special focus on the consequences of the flow of refugees from Venezuela (Completed, summer 2020)
• Development of recruiting strategies for an app-based dietary survey among Elderly (Completed, summer 2020)
• Assessment of the nutritional quality of snack bars in the German market based on a nutrient profiling approach (Completed, summer 2020)