Smart food scale measures each meal’s nutritional balance

The Prep Pad is a weighing scale that can determine the exact nutritional content of the meal being prepared, as well as tracking users' eating habits.

A maxim that is commonly heard when weight-loss products are involved is the need for a balanced diet. However, aside from analyzing the labels that come on the back of every supermarket purchase, it’s difficult for consumers to know exactly what nutrition they’re getting. The Prep Pad is a weighing scale that can determine the exact nutritional content of the meal being prepared, as well as tracking users’ eating habits.

Cooks can use the scale to do its traditional job – accurately weigh ingredients before they go into a meal – but it has been designed to provide much more rich data. It comes with a Low Energy BlueTooth connection and an accompanying iOS app called Countertop, which displays all of this data in an easy-to-understand and visual way. Users simply place any food on the scales, indicate what it is, and the app delivers nutritional information supplied by the United States Department of Agriculture. The app can show the nutritional data for a group of different foods by adding them one after the other, enabling users to see how many calories, proteins and fat are in their meal and make decisions about what to put in or leave out in real time. The app also tracks the foods each user has been eating – useful for both those wanting to improve their health and others with specific dietary requirements.

After completing a successful Kickstarter campaign in May, the Prep Pad is available to pre-order for USD 149.95 and will be delivered in November. Are there other kitchen products that could tell consumers more about what’s in the food they eat?

Spotted by: Murray Orange