We all know that food logging is essential to keep a check on your calorie intake. But, food logging is boring and if you are not very dedicated, the chances are there that you will lose your track. To make this job simple, a computer scientist from the University at Buffalo, New York, has devised a whole new way of food logging and counting the consumed calories. Here, you just wear a choker-style necklace that is able calculate your calorie intake based on the sounds you make while you chew!
The wearable device, which is called AutoDietary, works on a simple assumption that different foods make different type of sounds when you chew them. Wenyao Xu, who is the main brain behind the gadget, is trying to create a catalogue of biting, grinding, and swallowing sounds of different types of food. This library will power the app that is being developed in collaboration with China’s Northeastern University.
“There is no shortage of wearable devices that tell us how many calories we burn, but creating a device that reliably measures caloric intake isn’t so easy,” Xu explained. “People either forget or they tend to forget or they want to forget what they eat.”
“You can set up a threshold,” he informed. “For example, I want to eat 2,000 calories a day. Once you have reached that, the threshold will send you a reminder.
AutoDietary is designed like a necklace that fits comfortably around the neck. This allows its high-fidelity microphone to record sounds of eating. The captured sounds are then sent to the smartphone app via Bluetooth. The app compares the database sounds with captured sounds and identify the food and the calorie consumed. This device is said to be 85% accurate and effort is being made to enhance the accuracy further.
The inaccuracy arises because of foods of similar texture and similar sounds. Frosted corn flakes and regular corn flakes are very difficult to identify separately though calorie counts will be vastly different. In case the dish contains more than one ingredient the device cannot identify that correctly. These limitations are being addressed through better algorithm and by adding a biomonitoring device. When the device detects that you are eating a general type of food, it activates the biomonitoring process which in turn monitors blood glucose level etc. to determine the total calorie value of the food.
Despite its drawbacks, AutoDietary is a pretty neat concept. We are sure that it will be further improved in the days to come. This device will be really helpful for people suffering from diabetes, obesity, bowel disorders, and several other disorders.
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Author: Technology and Beyond
