It appears the gases coming out of our bodies may have something more to tell us besides the world's oldest joke. Aire is a small, hand-held device that measures chemicals in your breath to help design a diet best suited to your specific digestive system.

Different guts respond differently to certain foods – everyone's unique. And one way to work out which foods are causing bloating, abdominal pain, constipation and diarrhea is to analyze the breath.

When your gut disagrees with common components like fructose, lactose or sorbitol, it fails to fully digest them. This leads to fermentation in the gut, which releases gases like hydrogen and methane into the bloodstream. Those gases are eliminated through the breath. Hence how a hand-held breathalyzer like the Aire device can be used to detect and monitor which foods might not be compatible with your particular gut.

Aire: the breathalyzer that tells you which foods are disagreeing with you Foodmarble

Syncing with a smartphone app, Aire requires users to test themselves with different carbohydrate groups, then records the results to build a set of personalized sensitivity data.

From there, the app goes on to educate you about which foods contain which levels of each substance, and helps users build meal plans that work for their gut. After the initial test phase, the Aire can be used to monitor gas levels to see how you're responding to the diet it's suggested for you.

We can only assume a similar device designed for the other end of the digestive system would be just as instructive, if harder to return on warranty. The closest we've seen so far is a simple back-pocket fart counting device, but something more sophisticated surely can't be far... behind.

Available on pre-order for US$99, it's an interesting idea, and a further step towards understanding our individual bodies as we move toward an era of DNA-dictated meal and exercise plans and medicines, and a developing understanding of the enormous role gut bacteria plays in our lives.

Source: Foodmarble Aire