Feds could have gotten a “diet choker’ for $19.95 plus tax at Billy Roy’s Adult, Pawn, Bait, Tackle and Discount Cigarette Shop.
Via WFB
The federal government helped finance the creation of a so-called “diet choker” that monitors the eating habits of the wearer.[…]
The invention received a $148,379 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 2013 to create a sensory necklace to “fill the need of automatically detecting swallows and eating patterns.”
Researchers at UCLA, led by Majid Sarrafzadeh, the director of the Embedded and Reconfigurable Computing Lab of the university’s computer science department, released the findings of a pilot study on the necklace this month.
CBS News called the invention “slightly odd.”
“These sensors track the vibration that occurs in the neck when a person chews food and swallows their drink,” the report said. “This ‘diet choker,’ designed by engineers at University of California Los Angeles, can even sense what type of food you’re eating since something crunchy is likely to make the neck vibrate more than food that’s soft. The sensors can also determine if a person is downing a hot or cold drink.”[…]
Sarrafzadeh told Popular Science that he and his team personalized the device in a pilot study by having people eat a “3-inch Subway sandwich and then sip down a 12-ounce drink.”
The researchers envision the device not only for dieting, but also for quitting smoking, or reminding people with medical conditions to take their pills.