

Healbe GoBe: The Only Way to Automatically Measure Calorie Intake - JeremyNT
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/healbe-gobe-the-only-way-to-automatically-measure-calorie-intake

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JeremyNT
I haven't seen informed discussion of this product, but it's already raised
nearly $100k only a few days into its campaign.

My gut reaction is to be highly skeptical of its claims, and I'm hopeful
somebody here can weigh in on how feasible it really is.

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ejain
I'd love to see this work, but I'm not going to hold my breath (or my glucose
levels), either...

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1stop
How does it read glucose levels with impedance? Surely diabetics would have
jumped on this technology before mainstream wearables.

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JeremyNT
I read up on this a bit, and bioelectrical impedance is actually potentially
useful for glucose monitoring. Products utilizing the technique have been
produced and tested in the past. From what I can tell though, no such products
have been suitable for medical use by diabetics, since precision and
reliability requirements are very high.

My understanding is that one could probably produce something that monitors
glucose in this manner, but it would be inadequate for medical use. Since
there's not a lot of non-medical use for glucose level data, there has not
been much impetus to create such a product.

I asked about this product on Reddit[0] and got a few replies. A user there
claims the product could be legitimate, but lists several caveats regarding
its potential capabilities based on its hardware.

IF one assumes that the product is real and has the hardware mentioned in the
marketing video, I believe it would face several major problems in actual use:

1) It probably wouldn't be very accurate at detecting glucose levels

2) Glucose levels alone aren't a proxy for caloric intake, since such levels
are impacted differently depending on the macronutrients consumed.

3) There will be a substantial delay before meals impact the reading at all.

I believe that they could make this device, but given the limitations of the
proposed technique, as a way to measure calories it would be so inaccurate /
untimely that any data generated would be essentially useless except for
identifying the broadest trends.

It would likely be worthless for use in portion control, for example, which is
where calorie tracking is most useful.

[0]
[http://www.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/2059tg/is_this_indieg...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/2059tg/is_this_indiegogo_project_a_scam_healbe_gobe/)

