Patent ID: 8504440

Claim:
An electronic shopping system for use in a retail facility for updating user food tastes and recommending recipes based on the updated user food tastes, the electronic shopping system comprising: a database storing an objective description of a user's food taste, the objective description being represented via a taste vector having N fields associated with N chemical components found in food, each of the N fields storing a value representing a current preference for the corresponding chemical component, wherein N>0; a terminal configured to receive identification information of at least one of a plurality of food items selected for purchase by a user; and a network computer coupled to the terminal, the network computer being configured to: retrieve the taste vector representing the user's food taste from the database; update the taste vector representing the user's food taste based on the at least one of the plurality of food items selected for purchase, wherein the updating includes modifying one or more of the values stored in the taste vector representing the current preference for the one or more of the N chemical components based on the at least one of the plurality of food items selected for purchase, and storing the one or more of the modified values in the taste vector; select a set of recipes based on the updated taste vector; and provide at least one of the identified recipes to the user.