The health and fitness gadget category has exploded in the last year. With innovations like the FitBit and Nike Fuel, tracking your daily activity becomes easier and easier. One of the toughest parts of using these gadgets is the ongoing quest of managing your diet and food intake. If there were only a dietitian that could follow us all around and track food, remind us when to eat, tell us to slow down when eating. Sort of like having a parent with us at all times.
Time to get “HAPI” with a potentially meal-altering product from HAPILABS . The HAPIfork, 2013 CES Innovation Award nominee in the Health and Fitness category, wants to help you eat – literally! This digital utensil contains circuitry to monitor motion, like taking food from plate to mouth, and tinming of meals. It monitors the number of “fork servings” taken per minute and per meal and the duration of each “fork interval”. Meaning that your fork can tell you if you are eating too fast. If so you will get a subtle vibration reminding you to slow down. Eating slower encourages better digestion and frankly, makes you feel better after the meal. We have all over-served ourselves at one time. Imagine if you had a friend in hand to slow you down so your body could actually tell you when you were full? Handy, eh? HAPIfork can also track the length and times of your meals. Information from the fork uploads to your personalized HAPI dashboard online. HAPIfork launches this spring for an estimated $99. Combined with other HAPI devices like the HAPItrack activity tracker HAPILABS hopes to enhance our sense of well-being and therefore improve health.