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Patent 8,078,492 - Providing consumers with incentives for healthy eating habits
Dave York12/29/2011 10:00 AM EST
This is an interesting new IBM patent. Comments??
A method, system, and program for providing consumer healthy habits incentives are provided.
A consumable item, consumed by an individual, is detected. A health factor is detected for the consumable item. An electronic incentive is selected for the individual according to the health factor, such that the individual is encouraged to consume a healthy selection of consumable items.
An electronic incentive may be further specified according to the individual health history, exercise history and consumption history of an individual.
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rick.merritt
12/29/2011 3:34 PM EST
Wow, it took just over a decade for this patent to issue! Thus the description talks about embodiments in a laptop, personal digital assistant or telephone. It does not mention a smartphone or tablet app which would be the most logical implementations today.
I don't know which is harder--changing people's eating habits or streamlining the patent office.
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Rich Krajewski
12/29/2011 3:41 PM EST
And it might involve extremely debatable "healthy eating habits." Depending on who created the list, it might not even recognize that some autistics should not consume wheat or milk. Would it take into account differences in metabolism? I bet not. The ability of some people to manufacture digestive enzymes is different from the ability of other people. That affects what they should optimally eat. (For example, some ethnic groups can more easily digest cow's milk than other groups.) Would this patent take that into account? Or would it be just another fad, and marketing gimmick?
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Rich Krajewski
12/29/2011 3:44 PM EST
The electronic incentive should be interesting. I guess we will have our pain and pleasure centers wired up to IBM's Watson. Somebody call Captain Kirk so he can tell us how he got out of this situation when he was in it.
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chanj
12/29/2011 4:04 PM EST
The patent is very interesting. Maybe, it will help the participant to stay healthy. It might provide a reason for health care provider to charge a premium to the participant. Or, it might provide a channel for the provider to sell the participant record for a profit.
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Duane Benson
12/29/2011 9:38 PM EST
So if I eat a large bowl of ice cream, it will tell me to get off my duff and run ten miles? Perhaps it will also not let me get up from the dinner table until I eat all of my peas and carrots.
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phoenixdave
12/29/2011 10:21 PM EST
Reminded me somewhat of the old "rat conditioning maze". Make the right decision and be rewarded (apparently monetarily according to IBM). I'm not sure of the consequences of not making the correct decisions...
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Frank Eory
1/3/2012 6:01 PM EST
Hilarious, although I must admit it sounds slightly more practical than an IBM patent I stumbled across years ago that had something to do with sub-space communications at faster than light speeds.
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hm
1/7/2012 7:21 PM EST
How system will be tuned for various people? It may have user settings and can be kept to very low value to get almost full freedom.
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