Teens are receiving dangerous eating advice from AI chatbots, study says
Artificial intelligence chatbots help young people gain income dangerous advice A new study has made claims about eating and producing nutrition plans that don’t provide enough nutrients or calories.
Researchers from Istanbul Atlas University told artificial intelligence models, including ChatGPT and Gemini, to create meal plans for teenagers trying to lose weight and found that, on average, they provided diets with almost 700 fewer calories than a dietitian.
They are now warning young people not to use AI tools to create diet plans and are calling for safer tools to be developed with the help of professionals.
The author of the study is Dr. Ayşe Betül Bilen said: “We show that diet plans created by artificial intelligence models tend to greatly underestimate total energy and essential nutrient intake compared to guide-based plans prepared by a dietitian.
“Following such unbalanced or overly restrictive meal plans during the teenage years can negatively impact growth, metabolic health, and eating behaviors.”
Researchers looked at meal plans provided by ChatGPT 4, Gemini 2.5 Pro, Bing Chat-5GPT, Claude 4.1, and Perplexity and compared them to recommendations from a registered dietitian.
Independent He contacted the artificial intelligence companies mentioned in the study for comment.
The researchers instructed the chatbots to create meal plans based on a person’s specific age, height and weight. They told them to make a three-day plan consisting of three meals and two snacks a day.
Meal plans were created for four 15-year-old children, including a boy and a girl who fell in the overweight percentile and a boy and a girl who fell in the obese percentile.
The meal plans prepared by the artificial intelligence were an average of 700 calories less than the meal plans prepared by the dietician. The difference is equivalent to a full meal and could lead to serious clinical consequences, the researchers said.
The AI also recommended a significantly lower carbohydrate intake of 32 to 36 percent. Many nutritionists suggest that approximately 50 percent of a person’s energy intake comes from carbohydrates.
They also found that chatbots recommended protein intakes that were about 20 grams higher than dieters.
Dr. Bilen said, “Adolescence is a critical period in terms of physical growth, bone development and cognitive maturation. Low energy and carbohydrate intake, combined with increased protein and fat rates, may pose risks during the adolescence growth period.
“AI models are primarily trained to produce responses that appear plausible and user-friendly rather than clinically accurate. Our findings suggest they may be based on generalized or popular dietary patterns rather than fully integrating age-specific nutritional requirements,” he added.
Anastasia Kalea, senior nutrition researcher at University College London, said: “While digital platforms provide a stigma-free haven for people living with obesity, the current reliance on AI tools carries a significant risk: many of these models are based on generalised, publicly available data rather than the nuanced diet and medical history information of the individual, which would be painstakingly collected by a healthcare professional trained in diet and nutrition.
“The lack of personalization in such scenarios makes treatments less effective and difficult to sustain over the long term when compared to the care of a trained dietitian who explores the root causes and socioeconomic layers of this complex disease through active listening and clinical reasoning. But the problem is not lack of effectiveness, but the risk of harm.”
