Necklace helps your diet by listening to your eating
Wearing a chewing noise detector could lead to healthier meals.
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.
It's not foolproof. The existing implementation only detects the right food 85 percent of the time, and it can't tell whether you're eating a healthy or junky version of a given foodstuff (a common problem with cereal). However, the creators believe they could solve this by adding a biomonitor that looks for blood sugar levels and other telltale signs of specific meals. If the technology advances far enough, you could reliably use it to tackle diabetes, obesity and other conditions where each bite could be a big deal.
