Food production – from field to fork – requires
large amounts of energy and affects the environment in a variety of way. This
blog under my Smart Living beyond Smart Cities focuses on things like
innovative solutions for smart food and smarter food production, solutions to
reduce food wastage in the world.
Let me bring entire focus on the Food waste or food
loss category in this blog post. Food wastage is defined as the food that is
discarded or lost or uneaten. The causes of food waste or loss are numerous,
and occur at the stages of production, processing, retailing and consumption.
According to the British Institution of Mechanical
Engineers Loss and wastage occurs at all stages of the food supply chain or
value chain. In low-income countries, most loss occurs during production, while
in developed countries much food – about 100 kilograms per person per
year – is wasted at the consumption stage.
Despite millions of Indians going to bed on a
hungry stomach, the country is letting food worth a whopping Rs.44,000 crore go waste each year due to lack of
adequate storage infrastructure, fruits and vegetables alone was estimated at Rs.13,300 crore.
The journey of 1000 miles begins with one step;
let’s begin this first step at home. Imagine technology helping us understand
what we should and what we should not consume depending on our ability to
consume. The secret of getting things ahead is getting started; the secret of
getting started is breaking complex tasks into small manageable ones and then
start with the first one. In the farm to fork value chain lets go reverse way
and figure out what our home and accessories in our home can help towards
overcoming food wastage.
Here are few pointers to up on to leverage smart eating
in our daily life….
- SmartPlate™ is equipped with advanced object recognition and weight
sensors which enable it to automatically identify, weigh and analyze your
food intake while capturing a complete picture of all your eating habits.
- Connect SmartPlate™ to any wireless device and instantly track your
meals with no manual data entry. “Portion Patrol”
instantly warns you when you over-serve, helping you stay on track and
achieve your goals.
- HAPIfork: This electronic fork, which exhibited at the 2013 CES, aims to
help you slow your eating, which aids in digestion and helps weight
control. When you’re eating too fast, the fork vibrates and lights up to
remind you to slow down. By uploading the data via USB or Bluetooth to the
HAPI app or website, you can track how long you take to eat, your bite
intervals and bites per minute.
- Meld
stove knob: Never again ruin a meal from over- or
under-cooking: You can know exactly how hot you’re cooking with this
Bluetooth-connected stove knob that you attach to your stove and
corresponding thermometer clip that attaches to any of your existing
cookware. The app automatically adjusts the stove temperature to the
recipe’s needs.
- Neo
Smart Jar: Having trouble keeping track of what’s in
your pantry? This smart container, made by SKE labs (a 2015 CES
exhibitor), does it all: monitors stock levels of its contents, keeps
track of “use by” dates and also indicates when it needs to be washed
- Vessyl: Track the number of calories and nutritional content of
everything you drink with this smart beverage container capable of
analyzing liquids at the molecular level
- iSommelier promises to soften up the tannins mature wine that normally
requires years of cellaring through aerating your wine with highly
concentrated purified oxygen.
- Egg
Minder will keep count of your eggs - up to 14
- letting you know (using LED lights and the companion app) which ones are
the oldest and which ones might be going bad.
- Smart
Fridge: Ideally, we'd prefer a smart fridge that
orders our food online for us based on our stock levels but, until then,
we'll have to make do with this Wi-Fi connected cooler from Samsung and LG
that comes packing an 8-inch LCD display. That display offers up a
plethora of connectivity options including smartphone mirroring, smart TV
playback, memos, calendars and internet radio. It also keeps your food
chilled. Imagine how a smart fridge could help reduce food waste without
stooping to public shame. What if your fridge could monitor its own
contents, and ping you while you’re at the store to remind you that you
still have yogurt and don’t need to buy more.
- Packaging technologies can help, too. Marks & Spencer and
Tesco, two major retail chains in the UK, are testing ethylene-absorbing
strips in their produce packaging.
Technologies like these can make big reductions in
food waste all along the chain, from the farm (to distributor to retailer) to
your fork. While the contents above are compilations on what people at
individual level can do to overcome food wastage my next blog will focus on
moving beyond individuals and eye at retail chains, food storage warehouses and
smart transportation of food items to ensure wastage is minimal.
Even when food is prepared according to plan, there
tends to be excess of food sometimes, due to many unforeseen reasons CSR
initiative and many NGOs in India have already kicked off awareness campaigns
with countable few apps and toll free helpline numbers to collect leftover excess
food and serve the hunger.
Smart Cities should incorporate in their planning
with key focus in this area in terms of creating more Toll free Excess Food
Helplines, Apps, Awareness Campaigns, Collection Cycle Time, Food storage
facilities to ensure quality. On the other hand the citizen chapter should
ensure people launching weddings, parties, and events where there is potential
opportunity for excess left over should proactively inform or update the time,
date and place on a app that can route the information to the agencies to
complete the process addressing the quality and cycle time concerns upfront.
Thanks to Internet of Things and Connected World we
are living in which will help us going beyond normal into Smart Living in a
Smart city being a Smart person making Smart choices…
You may wish to write to me at rajesh.mohandas@gmail.com to
discuss in length the implementation technologies and solution architecture
blueprints with application platforms that are used in this area.
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