New food-tracking necklace listens to what you eat

WASHINTON: Scientists have developed a high-tech necklace that can track your calorie intake by ‘listening’ to sounds of different foods as you chew them.

Researchers are creating a library that catalogues the unique sounds that foods make as we bite, grind and swallow them.

The library is part of a software package that supports AutoDietary, a food-tracking necklace being developed by researchers from the University at Buffalo (UB) in US and Northeastern University in China.

Unlike other wearable devices that track burned calories, AutoDietary monitors caloric intake at the neck, researchers said. “There is no shortage of wearable devices that tell us how many calories we burn, but creating a device that reliably measures caloric intake isn’t so easy,” said Wenyao Xu, assistant professor at UB.

AutoDietary wraps around the back of the neck like a choker necklace. A tiny high-fidelity microphone – about the size of a zipper pull – records the sounds made during mastication and as the food is swallowed. That data is sent to a smartphone via Bluetooth, where food types are recognised.