(1) Nutritionists often suggest keeping a food diary to track your meals, avoid mindless overeating and keep tabs on nutrients like salt, fat and vitamins. But writing down everything you eat is annoying, and many people find themselves abandoning their efforts after a few days or weeks. (2) In the future, you may be able to track your food intake with a sticker-placed on your tooth. Researchers at Tufts University have developed a tooth sensor that can track glucose and salt and wirelessly send the information to a device. (3) Scientists have developed wearables for monitoring food intake before. Most of these have been in the form of mouth guards. American and Brazilian scientists created one to check glucose; it contained biosensors and wireless communications modules. But it requires, well, wearing a mouth guard, which can be uncomfortable. (4) Diabetics could theoretically use the new tooth-mounted sensor to monitor their sugar intake and broadcast the information to their doctors. It could be helpful for people with other medical conditions that require them to monitor their eating, for example, patients with high blood pressure who need to limit their salt. (5) But, Almquist, a professor of bioengineering at Imperial College London, says, there will be “significant hurdles” before the technology is ready for daily use as a food diary substitute. “For instance, for continuous monitoring of food intake, the sensors will need to be robust enough to withstand abrasion during chewing. In addition, foods are complex mixtures of compounds including salts, sugars and proteins, and the relative amounts of each that enter into saliva will depend on factors such as the nature of the food.
What does the writer think of the old mouth guards?