Evaluating ChatGPT for Carbohydrate Counting Accuracy in Diabetes Management: A Precision Health Approach

Artificial intelligence (AI) tools have recently shown significant progress in advancing precision health. However, despite this progress, the use of AI in carbohydrate counting-a skill essential for diabetes management that presents challenges in learning and implementation-remains limited.

This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of ChatGPT in creating a snack and diet plan with a certain amount of carbohydrate using carbohydrate counting.

Study data were obtained using ChatGPT (GPT-5 version), which is freely available to the public. ChatGPT was asked to create a daily diet plan with a 45% carbohydrate content and 4 different snack options (standard, dairy, fruit, and whole grains) with 15 and 30 g of carbohydrates. Carbohydrate and energy values of the foods were calculated using a nutrition database.

For snack prompts, carbohydrate values did not significantly differ from the predefined 15-g and 30-g targets in most categories (p > 0.05). Significant differences were found in absolute deviation values in the 15-g prompt-standard group. In the 2000-kcal daily diet plan, the mean carbohydrate percentage (45%) and gram value (225 g) were achieved; however, total energy values significantly exceeded the 2000-kcal target (p = 0.008).

Although ChatGPT demonstrated high accuracy in approximating predefined carbohydrate targets at the mean level, deviations in total energy and variability across prompts suggest challenges in simultaneously satisfying multiple nutritional constraints. These findings highlighted both the potential and the limitations of ChatGPT in carbohydrate counting and support the need for expert oversight in clinical applications.