Kitchen Technology: HAPIfork

“HAPIfork: Eat slowly, lose weight, feel great!”

HAPIfork is a smart fork which lets you change your eating habits for the better. HAPIfork helps you to eat at the correct time of the day and at the correct pace. It also allows you to follow a coaching program and to share your progress with the community.

As your mother always told you, eating too fast can lead to indigestion and poor weight control. The HAPIfork is an electronic and connected smart fork that can help you monitor your eating style. It also sends warnings to you using LED lights and vibrations when you start eating too quickly. Every time you take a bite with your fork it is called a "fork serving."

The HAPIfork may just be the new face of weight control. While the HAPIfork may not be the most practical technology for a business or restaurant to use it can be an extremely useful tool for personal, at home use.

The HAPIfork collects data on how long it takes you to eat a meal, how long in between bites, and the amount of bites per minute. The data collected from the HAPIfork can then be uploaded via USB or Bluetooth on to your computer or smartphone. Food babies be gone! HAPIfork will help you maintain a slow and steady course in order to help with digestion.

Why is it important to eat slowly?

"Since 2002, a series of scientific studies highlighted the negative effects related to eating meals too quickly:

Weight gain: as during the meal, satiety is felt after about 20 minutes. The faster you eat, the more you eat.
Digestive problems: food that is eaten too quickly is often poorly chewed. The work of the digestive tract is made more difficult.
Gastric reflux: several studies have shown that the faster one eats, the more likely the possibility of gastric reflux"

Perhaps health clinics and hospitals could use this technology in the future to monitor patients with eating disorders or severe gastric reflux. This could give patients a bit more responsibility instead of being physically monitored every second during mealtime.

Questions:

1. How could this HAPIfork technology influence the health industry?

2. What shortcomings or drawbacks do you see in this technology? What improvement would you suggest be implemented?

3. Are there any other benefits not listed above that you the HAPIfork could create for the user? For other businesses?