Future iPhones may be able to monitor your eating (and chewing) habits

Apple has been granted a patent (number 11568760 B1) for an “augmented reality calorie counter” that would allow your iPhone to monitor your eating habits, including when you’re chewing! Personally, I don’t want this, but still….

About the patent

The patent involves calorie counting in an augmented reality device — which could include the iPhone with its AR features. Apple says that many factors contribute to inaccurate calorie counting. For example, serving sizes may be difficult to measure while eating in a restaurant. 

The result is that people have inaccurate calorie counts, impairing weight loss, accurate drug dosages, and more. Purchasing and eating only from single serving packages to ensure an accurate calorie count is expensive and impractical, and leads to an excessive amount of packaging materials.

Apple says what’s needed is an improved determination of food consumption. That’s all well and good, I guess, but I don’t want my iPhone chastising me when I open that pint of Ben & Jerry’s Brown Batter Core.

Summary of the patent

Here’s Apple’s abstract of the patent: “Detecting a chewing noise from a user during a chewing session, triggering operation of a camera, obtaining image data capturing a food product, identifying the food product based on image data, determining a measurement of the chewing session, determining a volume of the food product based on the measurement of the chewing session, and determining a calorie intake based on the food product, the volume of the food product, and the measurement of the chewing session.”