This breakthrough technology will tell you exactly what nutrition in the food you eat

You will know exactly the amount of sugar in the fruit, the amount of protein in the beef and even the amount of pesticide residue in green vegetables.

Imagine a scanner with a size just as small as a grain of rice integrated into your phone. You go to the grocery store and direct it to what you want to buy. If it is an apple, the scanner will tell you the ingredients in it, the amount of vitamin C in each apple and the duration of storage in cold storage. If it's a fish, you'll know if it is a real Orange Roughy fish or just a piece of pink fish turned into an expensive fish. If it's a muffin, you can know exactly the amount of sugar in the cake.

You can know the exact amount of vitamins in your apple.

Although this is not a product that you can find tomorrow, this technology will soon be available in the future. Viewed as an outstanding application, this technology was initiated in the 1600s by Isaac Newton, the first to separate light into different wavelengths through a prism. You probably remember about high school lectures about identifying chemicals based on light reflected through them.

Each substance reflects light through a different way and the shape of the reflected light is an " optical fingerprint " of each substance. Although the fingerprints on our fingertips do not reflect anything about people, the peaks and depressions of optical fingerprints are very important.

Identifying a food and its scanner-based properties is a double job. First of all, the scanner will confirm the optical image and query into the built-in image library to find the object to be scanned. After that, you will follow the structure of the chart with specific characteristics. Combining the above two steps will help you learn a lot about the foods you are testing.

If you wonder about the duration of the cheese, the scanner will help you verify the shelf life of the cheese.

Tamar Haspel, editor of the Washington Post examined three companies that produce optical scanning technology devices on food . Two out of three companies, TellSpec and SCiO, are deploying handheld scanners designed for consumers. The third company, Target, began testing optical scanners with its own product supply chain.
Target, one of the largest US retailers, is collaborating with MIT and design firm Ideo in a deal called Food + Future coLab at Cambridge. The goal of the project is to help consumers have a better understanding of their daily food.

The project development area is divided into many departments. Area A with the main task is to study interesting technologies that can provide applications for the food industry. One of the highlights here is the optical scanning technology that Target is implementing. In fact, scanning objects is not a problem and can be done as easily as fingerprint scanning. What hurts is identifying what those objects are. The source of information that researchers need is huge. It is not simply taking an apple, scanning it and the information will be displayed. They will have to test on a variety of apples like Fujs, Honeyscrisps and Jonagold.

Researchers hope this product will soon be marketed at an affordable price for consumers.

In addition, researchers must know what the apples will do when they are freshly picked compared to when they are left in the warehouse. They have to know that the face of the apple is not tanned and will contain less vitamin C than the rest. Scientists should also refer to the quality of apples from cultivator A who is different from grower B, even if it is the same apple. And the only way to know how to read a scanner and identify different ingredients like sugar, vitamins and calories is to test all the parameters on the apple in the lab. The work requires expensive equipment with experienced scientists.

This is not a business deal, but Target is making great strides. The company is placing industrial scanners in its product distribution centers to build databases. These powerful steps to help bring competitive benefits to the company. According to Casey Carl, Target's creative and strategy manager, " We will bring freshness, quality and longer usage time, " because the production of poor quality or unsecured products The parameters on the package will cause the user to turn away.

Many questions are raised when scanning products for ingredients, ingredients or food production processes. Some questions - such as questions about E.coli bacilli or pesticide residues - will be difficult to answer correctly for consumers. However, with new technology being developed by many companies, all of these questions will soon be answered. New technology can also detect whether some foods are genetically modified, depending on whether mutants change optical fingerprints when passing through the scanner.

Today, with just one SCiO scanner priced at $ 249, you'll know the percentage of fat, gas, protein and water in cheese, yogurt, milk, meat, fruits and vegetables.

Imagine what can be gained from the technology. When consumers can know exactly which ingredients are in food, they will not have to ask the government to shut down suppliers that violate hygiene safety regulations. When consumers can check pesticide residues, they will not need to go to a high level agency to help them do that.

" This is obviously a lie detector," Overcash said. " Just glance at the brand, the eye and the message: what is this? "

Information is synonymous with assurance. We won't have to worry about legality when products like fish are properly labeled because every fish market in the US will have a scanner to check the product.

The technology will change consumer relationships with food, as well as product suppliers. Although it is not a problem overnight, it certainly becomes the technology of the future. Before the products reach consumers, these scanners will be rigorously tested in food companies to help eliminate poor quality products and false labels. And when prices fall, consumers can freely shop for smart scanners to ensure their food quality.