Going vegan with ChatGPT: Towards designing LLMs for personalized lifestyle changes

Large language models (LLMs), one of the recent technological revolutions, have become applicable to all areas of human endeavor, including health. In the area of health, LLMs have contributed to disease management, diagnosis, stress management, and other major lifestyle-related changes. However, li...

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Main Authors: Munachiso Okenyi, Grace Ataguba, Kosi Clinton Henry, Sussan Anukem, Rita Orji
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2025-06-01
Series:Machine Learning with Applications
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Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666827025000428
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author Munachiso Okenyi
Grace Ataguba
Kosi Clinton Henry
Sussan Anukem
Rita Orji
author_facet Munachiso Okenyi
Grace Ataguba
Kosi Clinton Henry
Sussan Anukem
Rita Orji
author_sort Munachiso Okenyi
collection DOAJ
description Large language models (LLMs), one of the recent technological revolutions, have become applicable to all areas of human endeavor, including health. In the area of health, LLMs have contributed to disease management, diagnosis, stress management, and other major lifestyle-related changes. However, little is yet known about their impact in the area of nutrition and lifestyle-related changes associated with diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, obesity, and others. In this paper, we present two case studies of ChatGPT as an LLM intervention for making lifestyle-related decisions, such as transitioning to a vegan lifestyle: 1. normal weight (healthy) and 2. obesity. Additionally, we considered three (3) dietary restrictions that could affect people in both case studies to transition to a vegan lifestyle. These include 1) allergies to nuts; 2) allergies to gluten; and 3) no allergies. We used ChatGPT to generate a one-week (seven-day) meal plan based on these dietary restrictions. We analyzed all responses from ChatGPT and found that ChatGPT provides a rich combination of vegan diets and is sensitive to these food allergies to some extent. Additionally, we found some challenges that relate to how an appropriate prompt can be employed to optimize ChatGPT’s recommendations and precisions relating to the total calories of foods recommended by ChatGPT. Furthermore, we provide recommendations to overcome these challenges in future work, including supporting user's domain-specific literacy and precision sensitivity for metrics that have an overall impact on human health.
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spelling doaj-art-aa532cfd77044e23a5b4a968210f9e492025-08-20T02:39:35ZengElsevierMachine Learning with Applications2666-82702025-06-012010065910.1016/j.mlwa.2025.100659Going vegan with ChatGPT: Towards designing LLMs for personalized lifestyle changesMunachiso Okenyi0Grace Ataguba1Kosi Clinton Henry2Sussan Anukem3Rita Orji4Department of Computer Science, Covenant University, Ota, Nigeria; Corresponding author.Faculty of Computer Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, B3H 4R2, CanadaDepartment of Computer Science, Legacy University Okija, NigeriaFaculty of Computer Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, B3H 4R2, CanadaFaculty of Computer Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, B3H 4R2, CanadaLarge language models (LLMs), one of the recent technological revolutions, have become applicable to all areas of human endeavor, including health. In the area of health, LLMs have contributed to disease management, diagnosis, stress management, and other major lifestyle-related changes. However, little is yet known about their impact in the area of nutrition and lifestyle-related changes associated with diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, obesity, and others. In this paper, we present two case studies of ChatGPT as an LLM intervention for making lifestyle-related decisions, such as transitioning to a vegan lifestyle: 1. normal weight (healthy) and 2. obesity. Additionally, we considered three (3) dietary restrictions that could affect people in both case studies to transition to a vegan lifestyle. These include 1) allergies to nuts; 2) allergies to gluten; and 3) no allergies. We used ChatGPT to generate a one-week (seven-day) meal plan based on these dietary restrictions. We analyzed all responses from ChatGPT and found that ChatGPT provides a rich combination of vegan diets and is sensitive to these food allergies to some extent. Additionally, we found some challenges that relate to how an appropriate prompt can be employed to optimize ChatGPT’s recommendations and precisions relating to the total calories of foods recommended by ChatGPT. Furthermore, we provide recommendations to overcome these challenges in future work, including supporting user's domain-specific literacy and precision sensitivity for metrics that have an overall impact on human health.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666827025000428Large language modelsVeganNutritionChatGPT
spellingShingle Munachiso Okenyi
Grace Ataguba
Kosi Clinton Henry
Sussan Anukem
Rita Orji
Going vegan with ChatGPT: Towards designing LLMs for personalized lifestyle changes
Machine Learning with Applications
Large language models
Vegan
Nutrition
ChatGPT
title Going vegan with ChatGPT: Towards designing LLMs for personalized lifestyle changes
title_full Going vegan with ChatGPT: Towards designing LLMs for personalized lifestyle changes
title_fullStr Going vegan with ChatGPT: Towards designing LLMs for personalized lifestyle changes
title_full_unstemmed Going vegan with ChatGPT: Towards designing LLMs for personalized lifestyle changes
title_short Going vegan with ChatGPT: Towards designing LLMs for personalized lifestyle changes
title_sort going vegan with chatgpt towards designing llms for personalized lifestyle changes
topic Large language models
Vegan
Nutrition
ChatGPT
url http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666827025000428
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