A company called The Orange Chef has invented a way to make cooks smarter in the kitchen by providing them with real-time information about the nutritional content of the food they're preparing and how that fits into their nutrition goals.
Prep Pad by The Orange Chef Company is,
at its heart, a kitchen scale with a brain. It bridges the gap
between what kitchen scales do, which is to tell the user the weight
of what's on them, and what home cooks very often really want to
know, which is the nutritional value of that food.
“It's allowing for the first time
consumers to have complete access to the nutritional value of what
they're preparing and serving in real time,” said Michael
Tankenoff, Marketing Director for The Orange Chef Company. “The
research that we've done talking with consumers has told us that
people don't have access to this information and yet it's important
to them. Many of them are going to extremes to monitor their fitness
level, but they don't have the information about calories and carbs
for their cup of Cheerios. They've never had absolute real-time
access to that information until now.”
The Prep Pad device works in conjunction with an iPad app called Countertop, to which it connects through a wireless Bluetooth 4 connection. To start using the system, the user creates a profile in Countertop, similar to the profile that a user would create with a Fitbit and its app. After the user tells Countertop the profile information, including age, gender and physical activity level, the app consults its huge database of information and comes up with a profile that fits the user's information together with U.S. Department of Agriculture dietary recommendations. From there, the user can modify that profile according to personal dietary restrictions and nutritional needs. “It starts you out with a rough profile, but everyone's different,” Tankenoff observed. “We've completely broken down the barrier in terms of access to this information for the consumer.”
Once that's done, the cook uses the Prep Pad to keep track of ingredients as they're added to a dish. The scale measures each ingredient as the dish is composed and uses its database of information about a wide range of raw ingredients and scannable supermarket products to calculate the impact of that dish on the user's nutritional intake. “As you keep adding multiple ingredients, the device keeps a running list of what's in the dish. You can add or subtract items as you go along, and the Prep Pad will accommodate those changes to create a real-time nutritional profile,” Tankenoff said. “The weight of the food is irrelevant. What people care about is the calories, the carbs, the information that people need to know.”
Once the dish is complete, the Countertop app gives it a score to let the user know how it has affected the user's profile goals. Then that information can be shared, if desired, with others in the user's social networks or with, perhaps, a nutritionist or doctor.
The Prep Pad is encased in a unibody aluminum case that's the same quality of material that Apple uses on its Mac computers, and the scale top is made of dishwasher-safe wood fiber composite that's safe for food. It's nonporous and doesn't harbor bacteria, and it's very easy to maintain. The Prep Pad can tolerate up to 15 pounds of food on its scale, with plus or minus 1-gram accuracy.
The system will be reaching the market in November through The Orange Chef website at www.theorangechef.com and over the course of the next several months, it'll be available through other retailers. The system is currently available only for iOS devices, but the company plans to make apps for other major platforms in the future. Prep Pad retails for $149.95.
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