Would you buy a scale that told the world your weight?
A product called WiFi Body Scale by Withings sends information to a personal webpage and an optional iPhone app, but now they have integrated Twitter, configurable (optional of course) to Tweet your weight/body fat/BMI to your followers from every time you step on it to monthly intervals.
It seems that leveraging online social networks for weight loss support is catching on in some rather unique ways. Although several indirect lines of research would suggest this may help (reviewed in a future post), I await further studies for a clearer conclusion.
(via engadget)
Pizza Hut’s iPhone app
Launched only 3 months ago, Pizza Hut’s iPhone app has driven $1 million in sales. A great success for them, leveraging a popular technology.
Can the same principles be used to drive the movements toward more local, fresh, and nutritious foods? Locavore, for example, is a success story in this area, making it easy to find which or where foods are in season, with a social touch. But will this type of technology encourage a trend toward healthier or unhealthier nutrition habits?
The first iphone UPC barcode scanning application by Dailyburn
Recently Dailyburn released the first iPhone application that is able to collect your daily food nutritional information (total calories and macronutrient splits with a free account) by scanning barcodes (using the camera) on food products. Check out the video below:
The application is available for $2.99 at the app store.
Cell phone texts and weight loss
An interesting study published recently found that people receiving tips via text message throughout the day lost an average of about 10 pounds in 4 months compared to no change in the control group.
This is a very small lifestyle change using a common technology that resulted in a pretty substantial weight loss, which usually takes more extreme interventional methods.
Some nutritionists use Twitter to send out nutritional or motivational tips throughout the day to their followers, it would be interesting to see if this method had the same effect.
Read a summary of the study here: http://www.obesitypanacea.com/2009/10/cell-phone-text-messages-panacea-for.html
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Join the Nutrition 2.0 FriendFeed room to further discuss these topics: http://friendfeed.com/nutrition20 -