Re: Software that reads food weights from kitchen scale directly?

December 17, 2004

Hi :

It seems to me that that is the way the world is heading. More

sophisticated ways of reducing the human workload. Question is: are

you thirty years ahead of the curve or just a couple? If thirty

years, then forget it because consumers are not ready for it! If a

couple then jump on it.

Also, it seems to me the bottleneck is in the existance (or

otherwise) of an inexpensive kitchen scale that can be plugged into

your home computer. Without it there is not much point in producing

the software. And what kind of price is the manufacturer of the

scale going to want for such an item? Will consumers be prepared to

pay it?

All questions. No answers I am afraid.

Rodney.

--- In , Dryden <@D...>

wrote:

> Hello All,

>

> I have been eating a CRON-style diet for a year and a half now,

have

> evolved to eating once per day, have seen my body temperature drop

about a

> degree F, and have seen my weight stabilize for a few months at

around my

> pre-collegiate ad lib weight. So, I think CRON will work for me.

The

> thing that I haven't done yet gotten around to is the bookkeeping:

to

> count macro and micronutrients to confirm that I am doing the CR

and ON

> components of CRON.

>

> I'm figuring that nutrient tracking is the kind of thing that

software does

> well, and that since I eat most meals at home, I can do this nicely

by

> telling some software (e.g. Walford's DWIDP, or maybe something

else) what

> I am eating, and then having it tell me what I am missing.

>

> For telling the software what I am eating, it seems what I'd need

to do is

> weigh on my kitchen scale the ingredients that go into my food.

>

> For this step, it seems that the ideal thing would be to have

nutrition

> software that directly reads an electronic scale. Then like the

person

> working the checkout register at a grocery store where the scale is

> automatically tied into a computerized point-of-sale system, I

would key

> into the computer just a code to identify the food being weighed,

and the

> software would read the weight directly from the scale. [There's

another

> optimization possible for the cook beyond what happens in the

grocery store

> checkout. If the software can measure not the total food weight on

the

> scale, but the delta since a previous measurement, it can save a

> step. This would allow weighing each ingredient as it is added to

the pot,

> without having to weigh it separately]

>

> My question to the list is:

>

> Does anybody know of a software or software/hardware combo product

that

> works as I have just described, or that somehow else would work to

spare me

> the tedium and inaccuracy of typing in food weights?

>

> Thanks for any info.

>

> Best regards,

> Dryden

>

> PS: I am a software developer. If this software doesn't exist yet,

then

> maybe I would create software to collect the information as I

described,

> and then somehow pass the data into an existing nutrition

software. Does

> anybody else see demand for this? My take on this is that the

CRON market

> is tiny, but the weight-loss diet market is huge. If there is a

> weight-loss diet that requires portion measurement, then there

might be a

> market for such a product (or one already on the market).

December 17, 2004