Diet App Claims To Help You Watch Your Weight By Scanning The Molecules In Your Food

It’s a new year, and you know what that means: new diet plans — or at least, you might be promising yourself to stick to a new diet plan. But it isn’t easy, which you know if you’ve ever sat staring longingly at the last piece of cheese on the plate, wondering whether it will totally screw up your resolution to finally lose just five more pounds. A new app and its connected smart device claims it can do just that, scan your food and let you know whether or not it’ll lead you from your chosen diet path.

Our friends at Consumer Reports are roaming the booths at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show and came across the DietSensor app, which purports help to help folks maintain their diets by way of a gadget that scans the molecules in food via an optical sensor. It then spits out information in the connected app with ratings on carbs, calories, protein, and fat, and tells you what you should eat for the rest of the day.

Based on the food you’ve already scanned up to that point, the app may then ask, somewhat passive-aggressively, “Sure you need to eat more?” or tell you you’re good to go.

The app will only work if you’re checking homogenous foods — so again, cheese, or a piece of bread, or a slab of honey-cured ham. If you want to find out what’s in your pizza and whether it’ll ruin your diet, you’ll have to add that information manually to your log.

It’s also a bit pricy: the gadget itself is $249, while the app will cost $10-$20 per month when it becomes available.

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist