Smart utensil tracks your calories with each bite
The Spün smart utensil uses your food's weight and a Bluetooth-connected app to how many calories are in each bite you take.
The Spün smart utensil comes with interchangeable spoon and fork heads.
I love food, and I'm a fast eater. So imagine my mixed feelings when I came across the Spün at CES 2016 in Las Vegas. This $75 smart utensil promises to count your calories with each bite and let you know if you need to slow down. This could be a dieter's dream or a foodie's nightmare -- do I really want to know how many calories I'm shoveling in with each forkful?
The Spün (pronounced "spoon") is available for pre-order on the company's website, and it will ship in June. Here's how it works: You use the Spün's app to take a picture of your meal. The app uses technology similar to face recognition to identify your food. Once you confirm what you're eating, you use the Bluetooth-connected Spün utensil to eat your dish, and the app will tell you the nutritional information for each spoonful or forkful you take (the utensil has an interchangeable body for the included spoon and fork attachments) based on sensors that measure the weight of your bite.
A 3D-printed working prototype of the Spün smart utensil was on display at CES 2016 this week.
This isn't the first smart utensil taking a micro-level look at how you eat The Bluetooth-enabled Hapifork we saw at CES 2013 vibrates when it senses you're eating too fast. Spün isn't quite as aggressive when you need to slow down between chomps -- the app will display your speed and politely suggest that you remember that your food isn't going anywhere (my words, not theirs).
Unfortunately (or fortunately?), neither smart utensil has figured out a way to track the food you eat with your hands, so you can still enjoy a cheeseburger in relative ignorance.
Features
- App is compatible with Android and iOS
- App uses food information from the MyFitnessPal database
- Can manually input recipes into the app
- Utensil uses rechargeable battery
- Interchangeable head for use as fork or spoon