The health officials will be looking at food trays of schoolchildren at five elementary schools in Texas through camera, as a unique project funded by the US Department of Agriculture aims to capture images of food plates of kids to monitor their calories intake.

The cameras about the size of pocket flashlights will photograph a student's lunch tray before and after their meals. Moreover, camera will not capture images of kids and will only be directed towards lunch trays. The food trays will be embedded with barcode to identify the students.

The photographs will be analyzed by a computer program. It will identify the food items in kids' lunch trays and leftover food, and will present the number of calories guzzled by the kids.

Health officials aim to reduce obesity and improve eating habits among kids through this two million US dollar research project. Researchers claim that nearly 90% of the parents have given their nod for recording the diet consumed by their kids. The researchers will make available the children's data to their parents and hope that once the parents are aware, eating habits at home will change.

Researchers have selected poor, minority schools with high obesity rates and diabetes risk for the pilot project.