WORLD
GE device measures the calories on your plate
Baku, July 9 (AZERTAC). Low-energy microwaves can tell you the caloric content of food, providing a more accurate estimate of what is on your plate.
Self-tracking devices like the Fitbit do a fair, if imperfect, job at measuring how much you move and then inferring how many calories you’ve burned in a day. But they don’t measure how many calories you consume. You can enter calorie estimates into an app, but doing so is a tedious and often inaccurate process.
GE researchers have a prototype device that directly measures the calories in your food. So far it only works on blended foods—the prototype requires a homogenous mixture to get an accurate reading. But they’re developing a version of the device that will determine the calories in a plate of food—say, a burrito, some chips, and guacamole—and send the information to your smartphone.
Matt Webster, the senior scientist in diagnostic imaging and biomedical technologies at GE Research who invented the calorie counter, says eventually the device might be incorporated into a microwave oven or some other kitchen appliance. Heat your food, and at the same time get a readout of the precise calorie count, without measuring out portions and consulting nutritional charts.
Webster analyzed nutritional data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture—which contains detailed information on thousands of foods—and determined that it’s possible to get an accurate calorie estimate using just three pieces of data—fat content, water content, and weight. The calories from all the other constituents of food—such as sugar, fiber, and protein—can be approximated by subtracting the water and fat weight from the total weight.
In tests using the prototype to measure mixtures of oil, sugar, and water, results were within 5 to 10 percent of the results from standard, destructive means of measuring calorie content, such as the bomb calorimeter that measures food calorie content by burning it.
The device works by passing low-energy microwaves through a weighed portion of food and measuring how the microwaves are changed by the food—fat and water affect the microwaves in characteristic ways.