CES 2016 reveals trailblazing high-technology gadgets

You won't be pausing to photograph your food anymore with this new gadget on the high street.

A new piece of tech from Consumer Physics, as seen in CES 2016, allows users to scan their food and receive calorie and nutrient data straight to their smartphone.

SCiO is a pocket molecular sensor able to scan almost any material to material to identify its chemical makeup, ranging from food and oils to pharmaceutical pills and cosmetics to name a few.

Scanning leaves and an apple to determine the molecular infrastructure

Imagine you're standing in the grocery store and struggling to determine the ripeness of an avocado or which watermelon is sweetest: this device can determine just that.

Just point and shoot, as they say, and you can discover the amount of calories, protein, fat, carbohydrates and serving size of the food in front of you.

Results after scanning a piece of cheese (main image) showing the amount of: calories, protein, fat, carbohydrates and serving size.

Via a small optical sensor called a spectrometer, the SCiO absorbs light reflected back from an object and breaks it down into a spectrum. The spectrum is then sent to the SCiO cloud for analysis and an algorithm sends the results to your smartphone in real time.

Although spectrometers are already used around the world, they are commonly very large and expensive, therefore not suited to general use.

The easy-to-use gadget can be taken anywhere

Anyone is capable of using the device but more so, as every item is scanned, it is gradually creating the world's largest database of matter. This could be used for advancing research, medicines, education, food systems and the environment.

I imagine a gadget like this would appeal to many people counting their calories and younger adults curious about the world around them. But additionally it can serve developers wanting to advance mobile apps using the SCiO DevKit and SDK, plus any businesses looking to harness the use of the molecular sensing models themselves.

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