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Meta’s Oversight Board: Dangerous diet videos can remain, but please demonetize them
Meta’s Oversight Board has upheld the company’s decision to leave up two posts detailing a woman’s fruit juice-only diet. However, the board recommends the company restrict the monetization of similar “extreme and harmful diet-related content” on Facebook.
Instagram will restrict posts on cosmetic surgery and diet products
You'll soon see fewer ads for "flat tummy" tea and lip fillers on Instagram. The social media platform announced today that it is tightening restrictions on posts related to diet products and cosmetic surgery. The new rules -- first reported in the London Evening Standard -- will apply to both Facebook and Instagram, and will result in age restrictions being applied to some posts and other posts being removed entirely. The social media platforms will ban posts promoting dubious weight loss products that are linked to a commercial offer (like a discount code). Furthermore, both will restrict users who are under 18 years old from viewing content that promote the use of certain weight loss products and cosmetic procedures.
Americans consume an alarming amount of microplastics
Americans consume tens of thousands of microplastic particles every year -- and that's just from the food we eat. Microplastics are also found in the air we breathe and the water we drink. Thanks to a study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, we have a better idea of just how much plastic Americans consume.
Keyto breath analyzer promises to keep your keto diet on track
The low-carb, high-fat ketogenic diet has become increasingly popular in recent years. Keyto is looking to capitalize on the dietary trend by launching a smart breath analyzer and accompanying mobile app that the company claims can determine how efficiently your body is burning fat and provide tips on how to improve and adhere to the lifestyle. The device is available for $99 on Indiegogo.
Sweetgreen's iOS app logs calories directly to Apple Health
To this day, Apple Health still lacks a food database, leaving health-conscious iPhone owners with few options. Most people just end up relying on an Apple Health-integrated app, like MyFitnessPal, to tally all their meals. But, let's face it, that can be a pain, especially when it comes to searching for stuff you eat on the fly. However, Sweetgreen has come up with a nifty idea to make life easier for calorie-counters. In what seems to be a first, the restaurant chain's iPhone app lets you send your order's dietary data to Apple Health from your cart.
Airbnb might soon be legal in Japan
Looks like Airbnb is faring a lot better in Japan than in its own home: it might soon be able to legally operate within the country. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's cabinet has given its blessing to the proposed rules that will be imposed upon the service, and they're now on their way to be approved by Japan's National Diet. While home owners won't have to worry about breaking the law when they list their properties, the service's legalization comes with a price. The rules include a 180-day limit on rentals per year, and not all home owners are happy with the restriction.
Lose It app promises to log your meal just by taking its photo
Keeping track of what you eat has proved to be pretty effective at aiding weight loss. Studies show that food diaries not only help people manage their daily caloric intake, but also be generally more aware of what they're putting in their bodies. Unfortunately, logging every meal can be tedious and time-consuming. But what if you could do it just by taking a photo of your food? That's exactly what Lose It, a food-tracking app, is trying to do with a brand new feature called Snap It. Using a combination of machine learning and its own food database, Lose It aspires to figure out what you're eating based on your photo alone.
Necklace helps your diet by listening to your eating
Forget using image recognition or the honor system to count calories -- if University at Buffalo researchers have their way, you'll just need to wear a necklace to watch what you eat. Their recently developed AutoDietary device gauges caloric intake by listening to the chewing and swallowing sounds you make when consuming different foods. It's easy to tell when you're munching on an apple versus a cookie, for example. The current system sends data to a smartphone and recommends improvements, such as cutting back on snacks or slowing down if you tend to rush through dinner.
Diet-based 'video game' claims to make you thinner
We know that Pavlovian conditioning can make you do all sorts of crazy things, so could it be used to make us all a bit healthier? Psychologists from the universities of Exeter and Cardiff believe that it's possible after building a "computer game" that, essentially, trains you to steer clear of bad food. Unfortunately, the game itself is just a flashcard routine where players are asked to push a button when they're shown salad and hold off when they see cookies. If we're honest, the bad guys in the food and drink industry still have the upper hand, just look at Cool Spot, the 1993 platformer that was a giant ad for 7 Up.
Sensor helps you watch your diet by tracking your chewing
Tired of having to catalog every meal in your favorite fitness app just to get a sense of whether or not you're burning enough energy? You might get some relief in the near future. The University of Alabama has built an ear-worn sensor that estimates your food intake by tracking your chewing. The Automatic Ingestion Monitor (AIM) combines imagery of your meals with jaw vibrations to determine both the volume and energy levels of whatever you're eating. It's smart enough to filter out talking, so you won't throw it off by holding conversations in between bites.
Misfit Shine teams with Lose It! calorie-counting to keep your diet on course
Just last month, another sleep-tracking option came to Misfit's Shine activity-logging app, and now, users can couple caloric burn with the intake. Thanks to a cooperative effort with Lose It! -- a nutrition monitoring app/service -- you'll be able to log what you consume and keep track of all the corresponding stats across the web, Android and iOS with the diet-minded outfit. From there, send over Shine's collected data to calculate your overall progress. As you might expect, Lose It! offers barcode scanning to enter foods and customized plans to keep things simple, but a $40 annual subscription is required to leverage the skills of the activity tracker (Jawbone's Up line, Nike FuelBand and Fitbit devices are already supported) or a fitness app.
Switched On: The next steps for digital wellness, part two
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology. The last Switched On discussed many of the limitations of today's fitness monitors and how input regarding other lifestyle variations could create a more complete picture of how we control our health. But there are other health factors that change infrequently and can have a profound impact on our well-being.
Noom Weight for iPhone is a calorie counting app that could benefit from bulking up
Noom Weight for iPhone is a simple, free app that lets you log calorie intake, weight and exercise. It's based on the Noom Weight Coach app for Android, but doesn't have all the bells and whistles that the Android app has. The idea behind the Noom Weight app is that by logging your daily food and exercise, you become more aware of your eating habits, which in turn should motivate you to eat more healthily and exercise more regularly. When you first open Noom Weight, you fill out a profile of yourself based on your gender, your current and target weight, your height and how quickly you would like to reach your target weight. The app then determines approximately what your daily calorie intake should be. From there, each day you log your exercise and food intake, starting with breakfast and working your way through to dinner, aiming for your target calorie intake. Up until this point, I was really excited about Noom Weight. I'm not looking to lose a load of weight, but it would benefit me to shape up a little. The idea of logging and tracking my food intake and exercise actually seemed quite interesting and fun, and if I ended up shaping up a bit along the way, all the better. However, the experience soon became a burden and chore. Not because of the app's design or UI -- Noom Weight is actually a really well-designed app; it's well laid out and easy to use. The reason is when I came to logging food, the app hardly recognized any of the food I was trying to log, which meant I had to manually enter the calorie content of each piece of food I ate... and I don't know the calorie content of every piece of food I eat. For example, this morning I had half of a mashed avocado with salt and pepper on a slice of buttered, whole-grain toast. Entering avocado into the app was fine; that was recognized immediately. But when I entered whole-grain bread into the app, it didn't recognize that. I had to find out how many calories my slice of wholegrain toast had in it, then add the calories for the butter. That may not sound like a chore, but when you have to do that for most items in a varied diet, it becomes extremely laborious and time consuming. After a couple days, I realized that what I was entering was not accurate and the process was taking up too much of my time, which nullified the purpose of the app. I gave up. As mentioned above, I really like the design and feel of the Noom Weight app. I also like the thinking behind it, but until the Noom Weight app has a much more extensive and up-to-date food-to-calorie database, or even the ability to scan barcodes of food packages for quick calorie-counting -- like some other calorie-counting apps out there -- it's not going to be much use to the average person wanting keep track of their food intake. However, if you're the kind of person who weighs everything you eat to work out the calories anyway, Noom Weight is a great place to store that information. Do you use a calorie counting app? Let us know what works for you in the comments below.
If you have food intolerance or allergies this is the app for you
Food Intolerances is a US$5.99 universal app designed to help those whose diet is restricted by a food allergy or intolerance. It is believed that up to 15 million Americans have food allergies. Food intolerance doesn't involve the immune system, but is a strong adverse reaction to a particular food. Many people have these issues but don't really know what is triggering the reaction. You can use Food Intolerances to search foods by category, like Meat, Dairy Products or Fish; or search by name. Each item provides details of its composition, like lactose, fructose/glucose ratios, Histamine content and food additives among other details. While the app does not rate specific brands of food, there is enough information to get a pretty clear picture of what foods may be problematic. %Gallery-192286% Filters let you select suitable foods, and you can add your own comments. The data is built into the app, so it does not require a data connection unless you use the Wikipedia links for more information. The app also lets you create a safe shopping list that's free of foods you can't have. In a thoughtful touch, the app can display in gray scale for those who are colorblind. When you start the app, you are asked to check your known food intolerances, and there is a sliding bar that lets you specify your sensitivity. When you search by category or a specific item, you'll see if the food poses any danger to you. The app is very complete, and I found it easy to use without referring to the built-in manual. The app provides options for in-app purchases with nutrition facts and more filters for allergens. Similar apps that aren't rated as highly by users include Grain or no Grain, Your Food Intolerance and iPhood Intolerance. The app is a 26 MB download and is optimized for the iPhone 5. Food Intolerances requires iOS 4.3 or later.
Nutrino is a virtual nutritionist for iOS, we go hands-on
As a recovering food addict, I've been told on numerous occasions that washboard abs are created in the kitchen, not in the gym. That's why we were intrigued to take a look at Nutrino, an iOS app that promises a "virtual nutritionist" service to help slice away the adipose from our stomach. We spent some time putting the software through its paces, and if you're thinking of making the leap, head on past the break to learn more.
How to stay healthy while leveling
What are you going to do first when you start playing Mists of Pandaria? If the answer is leveling to 90, you're in for a lot of potentially unhealthy sitting/munching/caffeine-ing. But you don't have to make Rockstar pyramids or worry about Cheetos stains on the keyboard while spreading in your chair, getting repetitive motion injuries, and otherwise straining your body just to get those levels in. Here are some tips for staying (mostly) healthy while progressing through Pandaria. Get healthy snacks Snacking, or grazing as my doctor calls it, is actually good for you when small and well-spaced throughout the gaming session. Healthy snacks are best of course, but if you must have your favorite munchies, having them in small doses is better than constant gorging. Willing to substitute for yummy but healthy? Try these. Nuts Barring allergies, nuts of all kinds are a healthy snack. Protein, good carbs, iron -- they are full of good nutrients. Nuts will even help balance things out if you choose to imbibe the sugary drinks. Crackers If you're into crackers, get the whole grain/low carb ones. I like Akmaks. Thin slices of cheese as toppings are good, but nut butters are even better.
Professors develop food-magnifying glasses, no need to super size
Big eyes, small stomach. We've all been there at some point, when we load our plate up with more than our tummies can handle. Now, a team of Professors at Tokyo University has created special glasses that magnify the food on your plate, to create the illusion of larger portions, and trick your brain into creating a sensation of fullness. Now this might just sound like "magnifying glasses" but to give it credit, it's a little smarter than that. The diet-specs house a camera that only expands your nosh (up to fifty percent,) and not your hands. The proof of concept has been backed up by a small group test of 12 people. The subjects consumed 9.3 percent less cookies when magnified, and ate 15 percent more when the treats were set to appear smaller. Certainly these are the wackiest glasses we've seen in, oh, over a week.
IBM wins diet monitoring and reward patent, celebrates with sip of Spirulina
Does your employer offer a "wellness rebate program?" No? Then you can't be working for IBM, which has been bribing its staff to eat healthier since 2004. It's a Watson-worthy idea, because what the company pays out in incentives it recoups in lower healthcare costs. Now, after a decade of toing and froing with the USPTO, IBM has finally patented a web-based system that makes the whole process automatic. For it to work, a person must use a micro-payment network to buy food, which allows their purchases to be monitored and compared against their health records. If they've made the right choices, the system then communicates with their employer's payroll server to issue a reward. Completing the Orwellian circle, the proposed system also interacts with servers in the FDA and health insurance companies to gain information about specific food products or policy changes. You can duck the radar, of course, and buy a Double Whopper with cash, but it'll bring you no reward except swollen ankles. This is IBM we're talking about; they've thought of everything. [Photo via Shutterstock]
Player blasts free from overweight gamer stereotype
From Hollywood celebrities to the guy next door, millions of people have made World of Warcraft a part of their lives. How do you play WoW? We're giving each approach its own 15 Minutes of Fame. Teeth-gritting stereotypes aside, the intersection of fitness and gaming is something we've covered a fair amount here at WoW Insider. There's the player who set up a system of "leveling down" as he lost weight, although a visit to his blog these days doesn't turn up much action. There's the player who lost 100 pounds on a treadmill while he played WoW, before such exercise setups were relatively common. We even ran an entire series last year on shaping up, Buffing for BlizzCon. What we haven't run yet is a story on a gamer who's taken the weight off and kept it off while not only piling on new interests and active pursuits but also maintaining his love of WoW and gaming. A WoW player since the days of the original beta, Jonathan (aka Thundertotem) was a finalist in Subway Canada's Commit to Fit Ambassador search. While he wasn't ultimately chosen as the Subway representative and spokesperson, he says he remains a hardcore gamer even with his weight loss and fitness success.
Bite Counter knows how many donuts you devoured, shames you into eating less
Because all you ever really wanted was an $800 bracelet that counts calories... enter the Bite Counter. It's the retro-lookin' lovechild of two Clemson University researchers that helps its hosts approximate caloric consumption by counting how many bites they take. Color us skeptical, as the meatbag wearing the gizmo has to -- gasp! -- actually remember to both start and stop the device each time they feast. The duo is hopeful it'll glean useful data for future research, as the contraption can be used "anywhere, such as at restaurants or while working" -- you know, places where scribbling how much you eat in a secret diary is frowned upon. Best of luck fellas, but until it hits a sub-century price point, we'll just stick to eating salads. PR after the jump.
