NutriSmart Edible RFID Tags: The Future of Food Tracking?
By: Marissa Brassfield
Published: May 31, 2011

Radio frequency identification cards are already used throughout our tech-savvy world to track things, but Hannes Harms' NutriSmart edible RFID tags aim to go beyond merely preventing hotel towel theft; his concept would allow consumers to track their dietary intake or maintain an accurate refrigerator inventory.
An essential component of Harms' NutriSmart edible RFID tags is the "invisible diet management system." An intelligent plate would be able to analyze items placed on it for calorie content, distance traveled from farm to plate and other data, transmitting it to your smartphone via Bluetooth. The plate can even display an alert if a meal placed on it contains a food allergen such as peanuts or shellfish. Another implementation of the RFID tags is for food inventory management at home: Tech-savvy refrigerators would be able to essentially compile real-time shopping lists that are transmitted to the homeowner's phone.
Check out a video of the NutriSmart edible RFID tags below. Would you embrace such a system if it came to fruition?

Comments:
Patrick
May 31, 2011

It's an interesting idea, but I don't think it will go over well with people. There are serious questions, such as how healthy the rfid actually are (what are they made of?), whether the data can be trusted, who owns this information, etc. Beyond that, I just don't feel like the general public would be comfortable with knowing they are eating something electronic.
Some of the applications are pretty unnecessary, but there are some real potential upsides to something like this. When there is an outbreak of bad food, such as an e.coli outbreak, the source would be found much sooner, and could save many lives. If what people actually eat were correlated with health information, the aggregated data would trump anything available now, and potentially provide some great insights into nutrition.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure the benefits outweigh the issues, so this one will probably be left on the design table.
Barnaby

RFIDs are fascinating and I love the idea of tracking food sources and handling. Still, have to agree that making them edible will be a challenge.
Shenita Rimmer

RFID Technology is very interesting in tracking food sources and handling. I’m looking forward to this idea in the future.