Cell Phone-based New Nutrition Program Now Running in Japan

Could you wait three days before eating your favorite meal?

That's the question many Japanese people are being asked these days by a new nutrition program that incorporates a unique combination of weight consciousness and cell phones. The island country that is the unofficial cell phone capital of the world has given birth to many phone-based programs, including a nutrition-focus program now running at the direction of the Health Ministry.


Participants use their phones to take pictures of their meals, then send those pictures to the public health office. Three days later, nutritional analyses of the meals are available, so people know how healthy their meals might have been. (Of course, they might have just gone ahead and eaten what was on their plate, but they at least know how many calories and grams of fat they inhaled along the way.)

The program has been running for two years in Osaka province, with heart patients the initial wave of participants and a larger group of diabetes and obesity patients weighing in this year.


Written by Josh White
Published in Mobile Phones