Can Technology Help Us Eat Better?

Interesting article (here) showing the current cutting edge of wearable devices, these thay monitor glucose for diabetes.

Why is this novel, or even interesting?

Wearable tracking devices have been around for a long time and the idea of tracking your steps has been around the block a few times now (since 1965!!). And glucose monitors, first came out in the 1970s, were corrected and perfected over the next couple of decades, and are now super common. They just never connected to the cloud like we so commonly do currently.

Today, we do have remote glucose monitor, but they’re new and the first one was only approved 5 years ago! As you can imagine, companies are now creating products to capitalize on this tech that allows the data to connect to an app on your phone.

But why is it interesting or advisable to give you one more reason to stare at your phone during dinner? 

We were always told that certain foods will spike your blood glucose more than others. They even have a term for it, which you may have heard as the “glycemic index. Every food was given one specific GI, which would be so great … if biology actually worked this way. But it turns out that the same foods don’t produce the same response in every single person (the study). 

So given this variability, how are you supposed to know which foods spike your glucose and which don’t? 

Enter the modern tech era. By having a glucose monitor that uploads your glucose data to your page, you can enter the foods you ate to know which ones spiked your sugar and which ones did not! 

Over time, you can get a pattern that creates a truer picture or your own body’s response to certain foods, which could be critical for the management of diabetes and pre-diabetes.