Author: Gabrielle Despaigne
Course: DSC 209R – Data Visualization
Date: October 2025
This project explores the relationship between seafood choices and anti-inflammatory benefits for individuals with endometriosis. Endometriosis is a chronic inflammatory condition that affects 1 in 10 women of reproductive age worldwide. Since diet plays a major role in managing inflammation, this visualization highlights which types of fish are the most beneficial, or harmful, to an anti-inflammatory diet.
Using a cleaned and preprocessed nutrition dataset, this project introduces a custom Anti-Inflammation Index (AII) to quantify how inflammatory each food is. The visualization helps endometriosis patients, and anyone seeking anti-inflammatory diets, make better seafood purchasing decisions at grocery stores.
- Identify and visualize which fish products align with an anti-inflammatory diet
- Compare fish preparations, fresh versus tinned versus processed or frozen
- Present an intuitive and scientifically grounded visualization that simplifies complex nutrition data
- Removed null entries and duplicate rows
- Standardized nutrition features to z-scores for comparability
Anti-Inflammation Index (AII) constructed with weighted nutrients:
- Positive, anti-inflammatory: Fiber, Protein
- Negative, pro-inflammatory: Carbohydrates, Sugar, Sodium, Food Processing Score (Fpro)
Each product received an AII score and was categorized into health zones: beneficial, neutral, or harmful.
- Filter to seafood categories only, including whole food seafood
- Rename to
sf-pckgedfor packaged or processed andsf-freshfor fresh whole food - Add preparation type: fresh, tinned, processed or frozen
- Aggregate by item label to compute mean AII and Fpro
- Scatter plot with:
- x axis: Food Processing Score (Fpro)
- y axis: Anti-Inflammation Index (AII)
- color: fish species
- background bands: health impact zones for quick read
- Fresh fish clusters in the beneficial zone, indicating stronger anti-inflammatory potential
- Tinned fish generally falls in the neutral region
- Processed or frozen fish tends to be more inflammatory, often linked to higher sodium and processing scores
- Validate AII with omega 3 fatty acids and key micronutrients
- Extend the model to other food groups for a broader dietary tool
- Add interactivity with Tableau or Plotly so users can filter by species and prep type
- World Health Organization, Endometriosis, 2023
- The Endometriosis Foundation, Diet and Lifestyle
- Cleveland Clinic, The Best and Worst Foods for an Anti-Inflammatory Endometriosis Diet