AIM: Helping You Lose Weight

Obesity is the number one health condition that exists in America, with at least half the population being overweight to morbidly obese. That's not surprising considering the significant increase in portion size over the past decade, followed by an increase in processed fats, oils, and food by-products injected in many food items to appeal to society's appetites. Sure, one can eat a variety of "healthy" foods, such as vegetables, lean meats, and whole grains, followed by an intense workout schedule, to lose a few pounds but with that bucket of delicious french vanilla sitting in his freezer, and a marathon of Game of Thrones broadcasting at this moment. he will definitely gain weight lost those weeks of weight loss in a matter of days. Sure, there are many helpful and useful tools to help one get ripped, but often require the user to manually input the information of the nutrition of foods or the amount of time spent doing one specific exercise which can be often hard to find, especially if one is eating at those fancy Italian restaurant, with that heavy cream sauteed in a neat risotto. AIM, Automatic Ingestion Monitor, is a new device among the many that aims to reduce the tediousness of this cumbersome process. Developed in the University of Alabama, AIM is a 3D printed heatset which contains a complex sensor that can detect whether a person is chewing food or doing other stuff with his mouth, and, once the chewing is detected, the camera inside the headset takes a photo of the dish the user is currently eating. The data, number of chews and the photos, are sent to an application and identifies the food(s) and estimates how much of the food(s) is eaten given by the number of chews and the photos. The application then determines the energy content of the food item and records it for the user. AIM is more likely, however, to be marketed as a medical device, but future developments could make it available for the consumer market. To see more about AIM, follow this link: http://www.gizmag.com/automatic-ingestion-monitor-diet-tracking/34606/