1. A food recognition assistant embodied in one or more non-transitory machine accessible storage media of a computing system, the food recognition assistant comprising instructions executable by one or more processors to cause the computing system to: receive a digital image; obtain context data indicative of the context in which the digital image was captured; detect a salient region of the image by algorithmically recognizing a plurality of different features present in the image; identify a plurality of characteristics of the salient region, including at least two of: color, texture, size and shape; compare the context data to data indicative of known relationships between foods and contextual cues; and identify a food depicted in the salient region based on the salient region characteristics and the context data.