Fuente: WIPO "tomato" A method for generating food recommendations includes obtaining food item files from online sources. Ingredients are identified from the food items. The food item files are tagged with metadata identifying the ingredients. A first set of vectors is generated that represent values for each of the food items and the ingredients. Food preferences are received from a user input. Ingredients are identified from the user input food preferences. A second set of vectors is generated that represent the user preferences based on the user input. The first set of vectors are compared to the second set of vectors. Vectors are selected from the first set of vectors based on similarity scores between the vector sets that meet or exceed a similarity threshold. Menu items are identified with food items that match the selected vectors. The identified menu items are provided as a recommendation.