Prof. Mireille Boutin
 

PKU is a rare metabolic disorder characterized by an inability to metabolize Phenyalanine (PHE). PHE is an amino acid present in all proteins we consume. By following a diet limited in PHE, individuals with PKU can remain healthy and lead productive lives. Traditionally, they have relied on food nutrient databases to look up the PHE content of the food they consume. Performing laboratory tests to determine the PHE content of a food is a slow and costly process. Thus food nutrient databases are limited and do not keep pace with the marketing of new commercial foods.


In this project, we propose a new method to estimate the nutrient content of commercial foods, focusing on PHE. The idea is to use mathematics, along with the information printed on the label, to estimate the PHE content. Below are some tools we have developed and made available to the PKU community.


Tools we have developed


  1. • New multipliers to estimate Phe from protein

  2. • List of Phe and Phe:Protein Ratios (pdf)

  3. • Quick fact sheets for PHE from protein

  4. • Web-App to estimate Phe from protein

  5. • Web-App to estimate Phe from protein and ingredients  (more accurate)

  6. • Web-App to estimate Phe from nutrition facts and ingredients (most accurate)

  7. • Gelatin Lemma 1: A rule of thumb to estimate PHE in candy

  8. • Gelatin Lemma 2: another rule of thumb to estimate PHE in candy


References:

  1. •J.Kim and M.Boutin, “An Approximate Inverse Recipe Method with Application to Automatic Food Analysis,” IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence, Orlando, FL, December 9–12, 2014.

  2. • J. Kim and M. Boutin, “A List of Phenylalanine to Protein Ratios for Common Foods,” ECE Technical Reports. Paper 456, 2014, available at http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/ecetr/456.

  3. • J. Kim and M. Boutin. "Deriving Nutrition Information Using Mathematical Estimation: The Example of Phenylalanine in Sweets with Gelatin." Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics 115.9 (2015): 1384-1386.

  4. • J. Kim and M. Boutin, “New Multipliers for Estimating the Phenylalanine Content of Foods from the Protein Content,” Journal of Food Composition and Analysis, Vol. 42, pp. 117-119, 2015.

  5. • J.Kim and M. Boutin,”Estimating the Nutrient Content of Commercial Foods from their Label Using Numerical Optimization,” 1st International Workshop on Multimedia Assisted Dietary Management (MADIMA), Genoa, Italy, September 8, 2015.

  6. • J. Kim, A. Talikoti, M. Boutin, “A 3-step process to estimate phenylalanine in commercial foods for PKU management,” IEEE Access, Vol. 6, No. 1, December 2018, pp. 30758-30765.















Nutrient Estimation for PKU Management

Learn more on Prof. Boutin’s PKU blog.