diet

Wearable, connected fitness monitors are a dime a dozen these days. But developers of NewYu, a monitor that will be available in September, claim they've got an edge on their competition.

The device, which is meant to clip to clothing on the torso or to a pocket, is purported to provide a more accurate view of calories burned by tracking, and differentiating between, all movements throughout the day.

In other words, NewYu knows if you've been running or walking, cooking or cleaning, shopping, or (presumably) mating...You get the idea. Actually, Van Krueger, CEO of parent company Wellcore, tells me they decided to steer clear of the "mating" category, but that it will register as low-, medium-, or high-impact aerobics, depending of course on the intensity of the, shall we say, heat of the moment.

Krueger says the fitness monitor is able to differentiate among activities by using advanced pattern recognition technology. This works much the way voice recognition does;… Read more

A psychology professor and an electrical and computer engineering professor at Clemson University in South Carolina have teamed up to develop a watch-like device that tracks wrist-roll motion to count how many bites the wearer takes.

In the lab, they report, their Bite Counter has been more than 90 percent accurate in tallying bites regardless of the food, utensil, container, or user.

They say the device, which can be turned on and off at will, is something of a pedometer for eating. It's certainly not tracking types of food. But even if it's intended to monitor mere quantity of consumption, it can only be so accurate.… Read more

MacGourmet Deluxe can help you collect, edit, use, and share your favorite recipes and recipe-related notes in an easy, intuitive, iTunes-style interface, which is much improved over previous versions. This Deluxe version includes all three optional plug-ins for MacGourmet: the Mealplan (to help schedule meals and sync up with iCal), Cookbook (for creating and sharing PDF cookbooks), and built-in nutritional data from the USDA database (which makes it easy to calculate nutritional info for entire recipes). The main recipe interface is highly customizable and includes a large, easy-to-read "Chef View" for laptop-assisted cooking, which you can control with … Read more

Want to lose weight? Forget fad diets: eat fewer calories. Ah, but easier said than done, right? Counting calories is not only a hassle, it's downright difficult for certain types of meals.

Enter DailyBurn's Meal Snap ($2.99), an ingeniously clever--if not entirely perfect--app that takes a photo of the food on your plate, then delivers an estimated calorie count.

Sounds pretty amazing, right? And it is, though there are limits to the app's accuracy. In my quick and informal tests, Meal Snap easily identified a small pile of strawberries, and correctly estimated the calories at 38-57. … Read more

Nutritional information is becoming more and more important as people become more conscious of what they're putting into their bodies. Nutrition Facts is a simple program that contains nutritional information for more than 7,500 foods. It's definitely not the most comprehensive option available for accessing nutritional information, but it's not bad.

The program's interface is plain and intuitive. You enter the name of a food into a search box and the program returns a list of possibilities. Click on one and the nutritional information is displayed in a pane on the right. In addition to … Read more

There's a big question being explored right now about the intersection of health and social media: Does the tracking and sharing of personal fitness and diet data motivate us to get, and stay, healthy?

A host of Web sites and mobile apps are banking on the answer being yes. FitDay provides a free diet journal; Daily Burn offers logs to track diet, exercise, and weight; an Awareness app promises to upgrade one's mental software; and dozens of other sites and apps cater to specific types of diets, exercises, and desired outcomes.

So the just-launched Humana fit social network, designed to help users live healthier, more active lives, is going to have to offer some pretty stellar features to stand out.… Read more

Yesterday I celebrated my birthday with way too much pizza and cake. Much as I enjoyed myself, the bulging belly I'm staring at today is a reminder that it's time to drop a few pounds.

I know from past experience that apps can make this a whole lot easier. After all, weight loss is nothing more than math: you just need to burn more calories than you consume. And apps take the guesswork out of it by tracking your caloric intake, deducting calories burned during exercise, and so on.

I've rounded up four winners. Take a look:… Read more

In a preliminary study a few years back, researchers found that an educational, online comic strip geared toward 8- to 10-year-old black girls helped them eat better and exercise more. But there were only 80 girls, and they all self-reported, and it's unclear whether the fact that they were paid skewed the results.

Now, the program's creators are set to really put the comic strips to the test when they launch a larger study, with 400 volunteers and their parents, to test the Web-based program. Called the "Food, Fun, and Fitness Internet Program for Girls," the … Read more

Dieting is hard enough if you're a reality show contestant with a personal chef and a trainer at your beck and call. For those of us left to our own devices in ordinary kitchens, we've got to remove every possible obstacle if we're going to meet our goals. That's where products like the Measure Up Bowls come in. These microwave- and dishwasher-safe porcelain portion bowls keep you on track by letting you serve proper portions right in the bowl you're eating from. Nothing extra to wash, and you can simply eat--and enjoy.

The bowls come … Read more