Nutrition
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Thor wants to help you with those 2019 health goals
You might chalk up actor Chris Hemsworth's ripped physique to perfect genetics and unlimited access to the best personal trainers in the world. However, for a price, Thor is now willing to share one of those advantages in a small way with an app called Centr. It works as a fitness and nutrition guide, giving you access to Hemsworth and his wife Elsa Pataky, along with his personal trainer, stuntman Bobby Holland and many, many other experts. "My goal was to build a program that takes the guesswork and excuses out of training, eating and living well," he wrote on Instagram.
Soylent banned in Canada over nutritional requirements
Canadians: we hope you weren't basing your diet around Soylent. Rosa Foods chief Rob Rhinehart has posted a letter revealing that Soylent is effectively banned in the country after the Canada Food Inspection Agency determined that it didn't meet standards for a "meal replacement." The company doesn't believe the CFIA's rules are in line with the latest understanding of nutritional needs, but it's not about to fight the decision -- it's halting sales of Soylent until it can make officials happy.
Withings tracks your nutrition thanks to MyFitnessPal
Withings has a connected scale that tracks your weight and activity trackers that help you lose weight, but it doesn't have anything to measure the food contributing to that weight. However, the company just forged a partnership with MyFitnessPal that should fill in this gap. Withings' Health Mate app can now use MyFitnessPal's nutrition data, letting you know whether or not you're exercising enough in relation to your diet. If you lose a few pounds, it'll be clear just how much your meal choices played a part. The collaboration is a bit ironic for Withings given that it's effectively working with Under Armour (which has its own fitness gear), but it's hard to object if it gives you a better sense of your overall health.
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.
Under Armour's MyFitnessPal goes premium for fitness fanatics
Roughly three months ago, Under Armour snatched up Endomondo and MyFitnessPal for about half a billion bucks. Now, the sports apparel company is looking for a return on its investment by rolling out the first paid-for premium version of MyFitnessPal. This is no casual tracking service, to be clear -- this is meant for serious fitness buffs. For either $10 a month or $50 a year, users can build custom nutrition reports and dig through the minutia of their health data without being bothered by ads.
Adidas miCoach teams up with MyFitnessPal, combines fitness and nutrition tracking
Balls, shoes, watches... Adidas miCoach line of smart things has been expanding to track your activity, no matter what you're into. Until recently, the fitness platform was a closed one, meaning all that precious data was siloed from non-Adidas software. Now, the company has partnered with MyFitnessPal so that your digital coach can know what you're eating in addition to how hard you have (or haven't) been working out. Users can choose to automatically sync their data with MyFitnessPal, which, according to Adidas, will let folks "gain new insights that will enable them to balance nutrition and exercise." Exactly what insights it'll provide remain unsaid, but at the very least you'll be able to compare your caloric intake and expenditures in one place -- self-imposed guilt trips have never been easier.
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.
Microwaves of the future count calories so you don't have to
If you're into the whole quantified-self movement, or you just fancy watching what you eat, GE is working on new microwave tech that could make manual calorie counting obsolete. The company's R&D department developed a prototype that directly measures the caloric amounts for the foods that it heats. For now, the device only works with blended foods, and requires a uniform mixture to provide accurate values; however, a new gadget is in the works that that will tally stats for a full plate. This means that the essential info for a chicken breast and two vegetables can be sent to a smartphone app while you wait. The folks at GE are using fat and water content to calculate calories as low-energy microwaves pass through weighed portions. It's too early to tell when (or if) the system will make it to consumers, but you may want to ditch those Hungry-Man dinners before your microwave has a chance to provide its own guilt trip.
The Vessyl smart cup knows how many calories are in your favorite Pinot
"How many calories are in this mojito?" you ask yourself three drinks in. Or maybe you don't -- but you should. (Those cocktails really add up.) If you want to get a handle on your beverage habit and make sure you're adequately hydrated, a sleek, 13-ounce container designed by Yves Béhar can help. Called Vessyl, the smart cup recognizes whatever liquid you pour into it. What's more, it can tell you just how much caffeine is in your coffee and send nutritional content to your smartphone.You can pre-order the device now for $99, which is a hundred bucks cheaper than the retail price. That's no bargain, but Vessyl's ability to recognize thousands of drinks is pretty impressive.
Kitchen smart scale will weigh food in calories as well as ounces
When critics become creators, the results can vary wildly, but the work always requires attention. Former TUAW (full disclosure: one of our sister sites) scribe Michael Grothaus is the latest, having developed a calorie-counting scale that's helped him lose 67 pounds in the last year. SITU is a smart scale that calculates the nutritional value of the food you're about to eat. Simply place an item on the balance, connect your iPad over Bluetooth and tell the companion app what the food is and Situ will tell you everything you need to know about what's inside.
The NutriSurface is an intelligent food scale with Obamacare beginnings
Obamacare is probably the last (loaded) term you'd expect to read about on a tech site -- no less in conjunction with a nutrition-focused gadget. But Andy Tsai, creator of the NutriSurface, actually credits the controversial healthcare program for redirecting his company ReFlex Wireless away from a focus on nanotech and towards a technological solution for the food and beverage industry. Pulling inspiration from a CNN segment documenting the new challenges and nutrition label requirements for major food chains, Tsai devised an intelligent scale/chopping board that would be able to streamline the information-gathering process for restaurants and grocery chains. The resulting NutriSurface, now its third iteration, has broken away from its modest incarnation as a one-way communication device into two separate models: a coaster and waterproof chopping block that not only transmit nutritional info, but can also be programmed remotely. Neither device is yet on the market and both are still undergoing testing, but Tsai plans to launch an Indiegogo campaign for the product and, if its current market success is any indication, crowdsourcing could help to expand its uses even further. As Tsai put it, the NutriSurface was "built to be a hardware platform where developers can [create] their own applications," thus leaving the modest device open to myriad uses.
Insert Coin semifinalist: NutriSurface helps you monitor dietary intake
Sure it's no HAPIfork, but the NutriSurface was created to ensure that you're getting the most out of your diet. The nutrition tracking gadget comes in two sizes -- coaster and chop -- letting you manage nutrient levels, portions and the like. NutriSurface's creators are opening up the API for third-party developers to help expand usage, but in the meantime, the product has some interesting potential applications for athletes, people with diabetes, chefs and a slew of other folks with specific dietary requirements. You can see all of the Insert Coin semifinalists here.
Food Practice Shooter: TGS 2013's nutritional AR chewing/light-gun game
Attending the Tokyo Game Show is like hunting for treasure without a map. Invariably, somewhere on the show floor is a hidden gem that makes the whole trip really special, and for TGS 2013 that diamond in the rough was Food Practice Shooter. Abbreviated to FPS (get it?), Food Practice Shooter is the brainchild of assistant professor Dr. Takayuki Kosaka of the Kanagawa Institute of Technology. The idea is fairly simple, though its execution is a bit more convoluted: In order to obtain more ammo in-game, the player must eat healthy foods in real life. The system has three high-sensitivity scales that measure the weight of three cups of vegetables. When prompted by the game, the player removes some food from the required cup, which slightly lessens the load on the scale, which in turn communicates to the game which type of food has been taken. Then, a head-mounted sensor measures the movement of your cheek, telling the game whether you've eaten your veggies like a good boy/girl. There's probably a less obtuse way to encourage healthy eating habits in today's youth, but where's the fun in that? Strap this thing to your face and shoot this zombie tomato or no dessert.
Google brings nutrition information for more than 1,000 food items to search
Google can already answer plenty of questions for you without requiring you to delve into the actual search results, and you can now add yet one more category to its knowledge base. The company's today announced that it can answer a range of nutrition-related questions for over 1,000 different food items -- everything from the amount of protein in a particular fruit or vegetable to the number of calories in a given dish. That naturally works in both mobile and desktop search, but it will remain confined to the US (and English answers only) for the time being. Google says you can expect it to roll out over the next ten days, and promises that it will be adding "more features, foods, and languages" over time.
McDonald's releases McPlay app: 'Hey kids, this is advertising'
McDonald's has awkwardly tried to enter the App Store marketplace with an app it calls "McPlay," available for free on the App Store right now. I wouldn't recommend a download (personally, I've boycotted the golden arches for almost a decade now), but it is fascinating to see the fast-food giant not quite understand how to do iOS-style marketing. The app is just one game at the moment, asking players to throw a ball into a Happy Meal box. And McDonald's is obviously being as careful as it possibly can with this one. Not only is the app all about gathering nutritious food for kids, but there's a "for parents" nutrition section, and as you can see in the screenshot above, the app proudly proclaims, "Hey kids, this is advertising!" Funny. I think there is room for McDonald's on the App Store -- big brands like Starbucks and Walmart have seen some interesting success by integrating iPhones into their marketing plans. But this is just plain goofy, and it shows that the biggest fast-food chain in the world wasn't quite sure what to do with its first iOS entry. Better luck next time, McD's. [via App Advice]
Daily iPhone App: The Eatery
Crowdsourcing, the act of getting input from a large number of people quickly using social networking tools, is being used frequently for everything from recommendations on what restaurant are good to choosing cover art for a book. Now a new iPhone app, The Eatery (free) wants you to use the power of crowdsourcing to help you forge healthier eating habits. The idea of The Eatery is simple. Snap a picture of what you're eating, and then slide the picture to the appropriate point on a scale from fat to fit. That gives the app / service an idea of how you personally envision the relative healthiness of what you're eating. You can also designate where you're eating the meal -- at a restaurant or at home. Next, the photo is sent out anonymously to a feed where others using the app can rate the healthiness of your food. Within a day, you receive feedback on just how correct -- or delusional -- you are about how well you eat. The fun part of the app comes in rating other people's meals. This morning, for instance, I was glancing through the feed looking at meals and found one that was horrendous -- large servings of fried food that could stop your heart a mile away. With a touch, I slid the image to the fat end of the scale, and hopefully the person who posted this will receive a lot of feedback of this type, gently reminding him/her that they need to make better choices when it comes to food. %Gallery-139175% The company behind The Eatery is Massive Health, a start-up that hopes to fight chronic diseases through analysis of the data gathered through apps like this. Earlier in the year, the company raised US$2.25 million in funding from an impressive group of investors who believe that Massive Health has the right idea -- using smartphones as sensors to gather health information that can be stored in the cloud. As an example of what Massive Health can do with the data, they used some early results from The Eatery to compile maps of San Francisco and New York showing areas that trend more healthy or unhealthy. What good are the maps? Perhaps they'll show public health officials where in major metropolitan areas they need to focus their attention on encouraging good healthy eating habits. In the meantime, The Eatery is a fun way to get personal feedback on your own eating habits, anonymously "scold" others for their bad habits, and contribute to a data-gathering project.
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.
NutriSmart prototype embeds RFID tags directly within food, traces your lunch from start to finish (video)
RFID tags are already used to trace everything from poker chips to hotel towels, but what if these little pellets were embedded directly within your lunch, providing everything you'd ever wanna know about that ham sandwich you're about to beast? That's the idea behind NutriSmart -- a food tracking system that revolves around edible RFID tags. Developed by Hannes Harms, a design engineering student at the Royal College of Art in London, these little markers would allow consumers to trace the entire supply chain behind every item in their cupboard, while feeding valuable nutritional information to dieters or people with particularly dangerous food allergies. Kodak, as you may recall, came up with a similar idea a few years ago, though Harms' prototype extends beyond the realm of medical monitoring. Properly equipped refrigerators, for example, would be able to alert users whenever their stock's about to expire, simply by scanning the tags. The NutriSmart concept also calls for a smart plate, which Harms describes as an "invisible diet management system." Just put your meal on the plate and an embedded reader will analyze your grub, tell you how many miles it traveled before arriving at your kitchen and transmit all of its history and caloric data to your phone, via Bluetooth. No word yet on what would happen to these tags post-digestion, though our inner 13-year-olds are giggling at the possibilities. Video after the break.
TUAW's Daily App: Push-Up Wars
I'm a big fan of DailyBurn for tracking weight and nutrition. While a lot of iPhone users stand by the Lose It! app for that sort of thing (and rightfully so, it's a good one), I prefer to have a service that's accessible from any browser, and DailyBurn (formerly known as Gyminee) is the one I've tried and liked the best. Earlier today, while adding far too many calories to my nutrition record (CES and its various events are not being kind to my diet this week), I noticed that DailyBurn has another app out called Push-Up Wars, designed to help you track your push-up ability. Just like the main app, Push-Up Wars allows you to enter and register how many push-ups you're doing each day, and then the app will track your progress both among your friends and on a global leaderboard level. Push-Up Wars is notable even if you're not an exercise fanatic, just because it's the first app I've seen that's not a game, technically, but still uses Game Center. You can earn ranks and achievements as you "level up," and then see global and friend-based leaderboards. Registering push-ups requires you to take a video of you doing the exercise (only uploaded if you agree to do so), so the app requires a video-enabled iPhone or iPod touch -- no dice on older versions. But it's an interesting idea that's executed quite well, and if you want to get serious about powering up those arms, Push-Up Wars might be able to help.
Scanning your way to a healthier diet with FoodScanner
Calories do count, and if you are among those who keep track of your daily intake and want an easy way to log what you eat, FoodScanner [iTunes link] may be just the iPhone app for you.On a trip to the grocery store or just your fridge, FoodScanner reads the bar code and matches it to a large database of food items. If the app is successful in finding a match, you'll get the product name, amount of calories in a single serving, fat, carbohydrates, and protein content. You can that information to a daily list to keep track of what you are eating, without the pain of doing it all on pencil and paper.While on a trip to my local Safeway, the bar code recognition worked really well. It just took a second or so to capture the info, and then match it to a database claiming to list over 200,000 food items.In many cases, the scan returned several items, but it was a simple task to select the correct item by name.
