This device is solidly the most cool tech gadget that I have heard of. I just got a new iPad mini for Christmas, I already have an iPad, but as many of you know, I am connected. I am an administrator of over 30 facebook pages from World Wide WOD, to The Garage, to CrossFit Bridgemill, to the 60 Day Turnaround, to the Firebreather Challenge Destiny Run. The list goes on and on (of course add HealthSprout to this list with two pages, the HealthSprout Chiro friend page and the HealthSprout Special Events page). My point, I need to be able to connect, and write and publish easily, so tech is cool for me.
However, I think I would trade my tech in, to get my hands on this new product. Though it won’t help me stay connected, and it won’t help me publish, it will still help me reach my mission by improving my ability to educate. This gadget, the Tell Spec will tell you the “specs” on any foods you lay out in front of yourself! Seriously, this is as Star Trek as I have seen for a food based gadget. The Mashable Article showed this photo of a device “hovering” over a plate of food, while it scans the food, and “beams” the readout to your connected smart device.
The info that is sent to your smart phone, tablet, etc, contains details on the content of the food in question. Gluten, dioxins, soy, lactose, aspartame… I don’t know all the details yet, but I wonder if we could find the total carbohydrate content, or perhaps break down carbs to fructose vs sucrose… this info is really relevant to what I teach right now, but if YOU actually had the device, then I could make all of this really relevant to all of you, quickly.
But, according to the article, we might be seeing price tags around $400-500 at first, which makes me think most of you won’t see the value in it… yet. But once that price comes down over a number of years, I would hope to see the purchases sky rocket. I guess it is yet to be seen how effective this device truly is.
“Our core IP is really the technology, the process. And this is the difference,” says Hoffmann. TellSpec beams a low-powered laser at the food in question, and low-energy photons are then emitted back to the TellSpec’s spectrometer, which sorts the photons by wavelength and determines what chemical compounds are within. The device is expected to hit the market in August 2014 at an initial price of $350-$400, and Hoffmann hopes demand will drive the price down to $50 in a few years.
This suggests to me that the product isn’t at a 90% accuracy as of yet (they are describing the difference in their product from others in the paragraph above), this because the low energy photons that are received back, could represent many different compounds. Thus there might be a really hard time differentiating many of them, as many chemical compounds will look and act very similar. But move a bond in a different place, and the compound acts completely different in the body, take tans fat and compare it to typical omega-6 vegetable oils, and you will see minimal differences, until it hits the body and starts destroying your tissues.
I ate at Waffle House today. Yep! My once a year excursion to the house. I do this every year for my daughters birthday, as she wants to go hang out where her papa hangs out. I had some of their trans fat rich butter today as well (not butter, just awful stuff). It wasn’t much, just a small little blip of it, but I was interested in inspecting taste. It occurred to me, that the taste of what I eat on a regular basis, is so much richer and more satisfying, than any taste that came from this restaurant. Which then suggested to me, that everyone could enjoy the life that I lead, at least from a food taste perspective, but they don’t because they don’t know the difference.
Once a year… and I saw two people I know, a member of CrossFit Bridgemill, and a graduate from our Total Food Makeover. I just had to smile and say hello, and just chuckle it off. Oh well, I have said it before and will say it again…. 80/20 is my rule. And I recommend you get there too. If you want to go 100/0, then be sure you don’t offend people too often. God cares more about you loving people, than eating right. I have colleagues and counterparts who sometimes fail to see that, and yep… sometimes I miss it too.
So keep your eye out for a Tell Spec in the office…. as soon as my tech budget goes up, I am grabbing one!
Be well and be blessed! – Dr. E
2 thoughts on “Dissecting your food, electronically.”
What kind of butter do you normally consume? And where do you buy it.
Pasture butter – Kerrygold from Trader Joes, Publix, and others. It is not organic by the label, but it is imported from Ireland, and the cows are in the pasture, so it is unlikely that they are getting any chemicals besides the occasional antibiotic, meaning, 95-98% of the time, your butter is perfectly clean, and because it is pasture butter, it means the cows are grass fed, thus it is loaded with omega 3 fatty acid!
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