FRUITS

FRUITS is a cool app that helps you figure out diets using something called the Bayesian stable isotope mixing model. Basically, it estimates how much food you eat from different food groups. It’s super useful in fields like archaeology, forensics, and ecology.

Understanding Uncertainty in Diets

You know how when you're working with data, there's always some uncertainty? Well, that's true for diet reconstruction too! But here's the good part: this platform lets you deal with those unknowns by using expert info that you can plug in.

How FRUITS Works

The neat thing about FRUITS is that it can handle unknown dietary sources. It does this by looking at the contributions of various food fractions based on chemical signals found in different tissues and food groups.

The Science Behind It

It’s important to understand that the signals measured show fractions like fatty acids, amino acids, or macronutrients specific to certain foods. The app uses isotopic fractionation that happens during metabolic processes. This means it takes into account factors like diet quality, body size, and growth stage while making its calculations.

Getting Accurate Results

Now, for FRUITS to give you accurate results, there are a few things you need to keep in mind first. The accuracy of the predictions really depends on how similar your proposed scenarios are to real-life ones and how many dietary proxies you choose. Ideally, the food groups should have very different chemical signatures.

Know Your Foods!

This means if you want reliable data from this application, you'll need to know a lot about the individual foods available and their chemical makeup. Using isotopic data helps FRUITS calculate food intake and show results visually in a box plot that features the probability distribution.

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