Steven Colbert On Vessyl Digital Cup [video]
thecolbertreport.cc.com
thecolbertreport.cc.com
See this link for Canada: http://www.thecomedynetwork.ca/Shows/TheColbertReport?vid=39...
It is the full episode with annoying ads at the beginning...
Then there's this in diet soda: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4-Methylimidazole
I recently stopped drinking diet soda because of its possible health concerns and switched to brewed tea. One day I'll be completely free of caffeine also, I'm weaning myself off by simply drinking more water. I really wish I had never started drinking caffeinated sugary drinks.
Here's more info and you'll see that the companies are trying to reduce the amount of the chemical in their diet sodas:
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2014/01/caramel-colo...
In consideration of tumor occurrence in the NTP rat studies, the NTP concluded that there was equivocal evidence of carcinogenicity in female rats based on the occurrence of mononuclear cell leukemia and no evidence of carcinogenicity in male rats. Section 25703(a)(3) states that “risk analysis shall be based on the most sensitive study deemed to be of sufficient quality.” The NTP studies in male and female rats were not sensitive and thus are not used for the dose response assessment. Thus, while the studies were considered, they were rejected for NSRL development due to lack of sensitivity. http://www.oehha.ca.gov/prop65/law/pdf_zip/100711_4MEIfindin... So California basically ignored some of the evidence.
This is a US based company. The USA is a country where water is close to being unheard of as a drink. Kids in school mostly drink milk (genuine WTF moment for me as a European kid who moved to the US), most restaurants either have soda fountains or try to upsell you on other drinks, soccer moms bring Gatorade/Powerade to their kids, etc.. I've been to restaurants where the waiter seems genuinely pissed when you ask for pitchers of water for the table and nothing else.
I guess you can't make much money from water (unless you convince the average American that the water from their tap is dirty and full of germs, in which case you can sell them placebo filters that you have to renew every other month), and that doesn't fly in the country where dollar is king.
Having flashbacks to putrid dead-rat water in rural New Zealand.. shudder
In Europe, you generally have to pay for bottled water, unless you specifically ask for tap water (and get a dirty look in response).
[1]http://www.fatsecret.com.au/calories-nutrition/coca-cola/coc...
The World Health Organization recently lowered the daily recommended intake of sugar to 5% or less of your daily caloric intake or roughly 25g/day.
What would actually be useful is something that does the same for food, although I have no idea how that'd work (perhaps a probe of some kind). It's trivial to calculate nutritional information for beverages as a human, but for those of us who track such things, I have yet to see a really good system for solid foods that doesn't rely on human guessing about portion sizes and matching to existing known entities from a database of foods.
Related information: http://www.psfk.com/2014/04/siri-creator-builds-platform-tha...
http://gigaom.com/2014/04/03/dont-eat-that-sri-built-a-calor...
[1] http://www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/nutrans/policy/beverage/us-b...
This would definitely serve the huge market of folks who track their daily intake:
- People who (have to) do it for medical reasons
- People that want to loose weight and need to get a better understanding of what exactly they are eating every day (often times it is not enough or the ratio of macronutrients is out of place)
- Nearly every bodybuilder and fitness-addictIt might be a valiant engineering effort, but the concept strikes me as a poor way to digitally tap into peoples' diet information.
The real solution is ultimately going to be at the point of purchase. Sales already happen in the digital space, so that's the logical point to start building a database of food intake. If you had a digital grocery bill, that information could be used by your digital fridge (or just a simple phone app) to track what's been purchased and consumed by each member of the family.
Taking that idea a step further, the marketing / monetization of being able to sell that usage data back to advertisers, or creating a "diet API" that knows peoples' habits after they leave the grocery store would be a gold mine. In that light, the Vessyl just seems insanely shortsighted. It's a shame that Colbert had to be the one to tell them.
Honestly, who uses the same cup every time they pour a drink?
Well, I do. I buy 2-liter bottles of soda because they're cheap, but they're unwieldy for consumption. At work I just have one cup, so that's what I use. I feel like lots of people already have a personal coffee mug or something. And more people would if they bought one of these.
That is my biggest (but not only) issue with this. And if both my wife and I have one, that each syncs to our own phone, now we need to keep up with which cup is whose? Too complicated.
[Edit: I was not being sarcastic. Having two identical cups in the same house would make it difficult to make sure we are using the right cup each time. We already run into that problem occasionally with our Up bands.]
Which isn't to say you shouldn't blow your stack and punch the wall, just that you should only do it in private :-D
Honestly if I wanted to count calories and monitor my nutrition, I would rather speak to my phone what I'm currently eating and have it tally everything up. And I would gladly pay $10 for an app like that over $200 for a cup, so until someone can bring this technology down to $20-$30, I don't care.
That's a quite a price to accomplish just that...
7 years bit was really great.
Seems like a nod to the calorie is not a calorie line of reasoning, which seems pretty prevalent on Hackernews.
Look at all the warning labels on cigarettes, etc. yet people still smoke them. Would a phone app telling you how much nicotine you're consuming get you to change your habit? No, the addiction is much deeper than just a lack of awareness that it's bad. We know sugary drinks are bad but we drink them anyways because we like them.
Knowing the calorie content doesn't seem to help most people.
Actually, one of the study's limitations is that the research failed to examine those who used the calorie counts and did eat less, Fernstrom says, Because for some people, it’s a helpful tool.
Because, Fernstrom says, "it’s really hard to count calories -- it takes a lot of focus and mental energy when done regularly."
These quotes seem to support the idea that if calorie-counting were easier, some people would find it more effective.
This is a really good thing for them.
The other issue is that knowing how much liquid you drink is not as interesting as knowing how dehydrated you are.
Note how they never say it "measures" the sugar in your drink. They say it recognizes that it is orange crush.
I'll be interested when I can mix up a batch of sugar, water, and salt and have it tell me exactly what I've put in.
Apparently it could also determine if you have STDs, and which ones.
[EDIT] here's the site: http://quantifiedtoilets.com/#feed Apparently it also tracks blood alcohol content and doubles as a pregnancy test. The former sounds convenient for a toilet in a bar: it will tell you if you're legally able to drive before you leave the bar.
> This was a thought experiment