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Ask HN: mini scale with mobile phone to learn food portion sizes
3 points by kuwachi on Jan 17, 2013 | hide | past | favorite | 7 comments
We are thinking of building a mini scale that would be able to communicate with an iPhone or Android for people to learn portion sizes.

Our doctor contacts at UCLA tell us that the number one thing most of their patients get wrong is portion control that most don't know how much 2 oz of pasta is and 3 oz of meat is.

How our scale/app would work is we would have a training game for people to weigh pasta and meat so people can have an idea of good baselines.

Lastly, people can weigh their plate (before and after) to see how much they ate and with some food description, we would be able to tell them if they ate too many carbs, etc. So we could say that you ate two servings too many of noodles in a meal if it is weighed.

We are thinking we can build the scale the size of a bluetooth headset for reference point.

Ideas or opinions from the hn community?



It will be the greatest thing to happen to the drug dealing industry since the pager.


hmm.. never.. thought.. about.. the alternative.. uses..


Integration with things like MyFitnessPal and Fitbit would be great. i've found that the less data i have to manually enter the better i do. i've had a fitbit one and aria for about a month now and thats what i have found. i'm having a hard time imagining a scale the size of a bluetooth headset would work. it seems like something the size of a deck of playing card would be good. i dont know enough about the mechanics of a digital scale but i could see the utility of building it into an iphone case


Great idea on building it into a case!


Advantages of visually determining portion sizes are that it is always available, discreet, and requires no cleanup.

Mayo clinic guide to portion control:

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/portion-control/NU00267


The mayoclinic does a really great job, but from our outreach at health fairs, people seem to have so many problems with portion control.

We had one batch of spaghetti pasta out, and we asked people how many ounces it was (it was 4 - double the portion). Only about 2% of the population got the answer right.

However I give you mega props for knowing portion control!


I would definitely buy this.

I am searching for that for months now.




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