Measuring weight and location of individual bites using a sensor augmented smart plate

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Food Science
• Nutritional Science

Background:

• Traditional dietary monitoring methods are often manual, time-consuming, and prone to inaccuracies.
• Accurate tracking of food consumption is crucial for managing health conditions and understanding nutritional intake.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a novel plate system for automatically detecting the weight and location of individual food bites.
• To enable estimation of consumed nutritional value based on measured food intake.

Main Methods:

• A system comprising a sensor-equipped base station and a multi-compartment polymer plate was designed.
• Data from multiple weight sensors were combined to measure and localize individual bites on the plate.
• Nutritional value was estimated using initial food weights and measured consumption data.

Main Results:

• The system accurately measured the weight of consumed food in each compartment.
• A maximum relative error of 1.4% was achieved in a controlled home environment test.
• Individual bite weight and location were successfully detected and localized.

Conclusions:

• The novel plate system offers a promising solution for automated and accurate monitoring of food consumption.
• This technology has the potential to replace traditional dietary assessment tools.
• Accurate bite-level data can improve the precision of nutritional intake estimations.