In case you think you sometimes (or often) overeat, the iPhone of the future may start to point that out to you. That’s because Apple has filed a patent for technology that tracks how often and how much you chew.
The technology is called the “Augmented Reality Calorie Counter” and consists of two parts. One tracks how often you chew, and the other part determines what it is that you are eating. So is your iPhone going to tell you you’re a glutton?
iPhone does tick you off a bit
Of course, Apple’s patent does not state that it tells you that you often skimp. After all, a patent only states how something is measured, but not what else is done with that information.
That Apple is working on this technology is not surprising. After all, it fits perfectly into the health portfolio of other Apple products and services. In this case, the company argues that it is needed to easily measure our weight and that people do struggle to track calories anyway.
“Many factors contribute to inaccurate calorie counting,” Apple states. “As an example, portion sizes can be difficult to measure when sitting in a restaurant, for example.”
“So the result is that people have misinformation about the number of calories in certain meals. It hinders weight loss and it makes it difficult to determine how much medication is needed,” Apple said.
Always checked by Apple
The technology means that your iPhone always measures when you eat through a microphone. This triggers the camera and allows you to take a picture of what you are eating.
The meal is then parsed in a (probably) similar way to Visual Look Up and Google Lens. In addition to then knowing whether how involves chocolate or fruit, for example, it can also estimate how much is involved. So it knows exactly how many beans are on your plate and how long you chew them.
So a similar feature would be a twisted addition to the already existing apps and hardware that monitor your health on an iPhone.