Fight obesity with mobile apps

A new anti-obesity weapon has just been introduced in Japan: a mobile phone application that can calculate calories from photos of what's on the user's food plate.

The application is developed by NTT Communications , which evaluates the color and shape of the dish, compares it to the database and calculates its calories. The application can even record the size of the diet to calculate the correct calorie intake.

Information of about 100,000 dishes are stored on the company's server and can be accessed by smartphone. This is not the first calorie app, but previous apps only work after asking the user for more information about the dish.

A spokesman for NTT Communications told Reuters: " We hope the app will help users know how much calorie intake they have for a reasonably healthy diet.

Current calorie applications require that the user input more information about the food. Meanwhile, our application only requires them to take pictures so they do not interfere with the meal . '

NTT Communications believes that this is the first application in the world to have such capabilities. A trial version of the app will be available in January 2011.

The company intends to add new features to the app, such as allowing users to share information about food and calories, offer menu suggestions, and exercise to reduce calories. or burn calories.