Ingredients List Retrieval

What You’ll Build

You’ll implement an image-to-ingredients flow: your app uploads a meal photo (or any other manually submitted intake), confirms the detected dishes, and then retrieves the list of ingredients and their quantities for each confirmed dish. The result is a ready-to-use, standardized ingredient breakdown suitable for nutrition and recipe analytics.

This use case solves the pain of manual ingredient entry by deriving a recipe’s most common/standard composition automatically, with the option to let users edit or confirm quantities afterward.

Prerequisites

• Plan: Analyse and above (see more info about LogMeal Plans)
• User type: 🔴 APIUser (see more info about User Types)
• Client library for HTTP (e.g., Python requests, Node axios, Java OkHttp)
• 1–2 sample food images for testing (JPEG/PNG). For best results, confirm dishes before requesting ingredients.

Sequence Diagrams

Main Flow

sequenceDiagram
  participant User
  participant App
  participant LogMeal API

  User->>App: Capture/choose meal photo
  App->>LogMeal API: POST /v2/image/segmentation/complete <br> (Authorization: APIUser token, image)
  LogMeal API-->>App: 200 OK (imageId, segmentation results)
  App-->>User: Show top dish candidates per detected item
  User->>App: Confirm/adjust dish per item
  App->>LogMeal API: POST /v2/image/confirm/dish (imageId, confirmed items)
  LogMeal API-->>App: 200 OK (confirmed items)
  App->>LogMeal API: POST /v2/nutrition/recipe/ingredients (imageId)
  LogMeal API-->>App: 200 OK (ingredients with quantities)
  App-->>User: Display ingredients & amounts

Extended Flow (ingredients & quantities edition)

sequenceDiagram
  participant User
  participant App
  participant LogMeal API

  Note over User,App: Extension after "Display ingredients & amounts"
  User->>App: Review ingredients & quantities
  alt Needs changes
    loop Edit until OK
      User->>App: Add/remove/update ingredients or amounts
      App->>LogMeal API: POST /v2/nutrition/confirm/ingredients (imageId, ingredients)
      LogMeal API-->>App: 200 OK (updated ingredients with quantities)
      App-->>User: Show updated list
    end
  else Looks good
    App-->>User: Confirm ingredients
  end
  App-->>User: Save & continue

ℹ️

The ingredients list can also be obtained from any other kind of submitted intake: manual input, from favorites, from a custom recipe or from a barcode.

Implementation Guide

Implementation Examples (Recipes)

See dedicated Recipes for runnable code and JSON response examples:

1. Set profile data once to improve label language and regional dishes:

2. Send the image for segmentation to obtain regions and top dish candidates per region. Display the top 5 candidate dishes per region.

3. Ask the user to confirm or correct the dishes appearing on the image:

4. Retrieve the list of ingredients and quantities associated to the submitted intake.

5. Confirm and adjust the ingredients and their amounts.

User Interaction Recommendations

• After confirmation, display an ingredients table (name, unit, amount).
• Allow quick edits (increase/decrease, remove, add from search).
• Provide a one-tap “Confirm ingredients” step before saving.
• Integrate the Easy Ingredients Modulation feature to allow the user to easily modify salt/sugar/oil.

Related Endpoints

• POST /image/segmentation/complete
• POST /image/confirm/dish
• POST /nutrition/recipe/ingredients
• POST /nutrition/confirm/ingredients
• GET /dataset/ingredients

Common Pitfalls & Tips

• Confirm dishes first to maximize ingredient accuracy.
• Ingredients reflect the most standard/common recipe; real plates may vary—offer user edits.
• Localize labels/units by setting user language/country in user profile when applicable.

Optional Enhancements

• Chain with Nutrition endpoints to compute macros/micros from the retrieved ingredients.
• Support cooking measures (e.g., tbsp, slices) and portions in your UI.
• Suggest ingredient substitutions or variants after retrieval.
• Export to shopping lists or meal-planning flows.

Next Steps

Pick your path based on what you want to build next: