As a fat load that is trying to lose weight, I am always looking to make my efforts easier because I'm a lazy bastard. The folks at the social network DailyBurn have come out with an iPhone app that supposedly can give you the calorie count of that heart stopping snack by taking a picture of it. It's called Meal Snap($2.99 iTunes App Store) and will help you save time looking up the calories for that sprout salad with blue cheese dressing or the Double Down with a Diet Coke. Apparently they have a data base of over 500,000 items to compare to the photo you send. After few minutes(probably the same amount of time it takes to look it up) it will send back the calories and identify the item. Supposedly it can also break down the contents of a salad or multi- item plate. You also have the option of entering the name with the pic which expedites the process. Of course I was skeptical so I decided to do a field test.
The App itself is very easy to use. Simply point and snap, hit finish, and your info comes back. As you'll see in the findings below it was surprisingly successful with some but had trouble with others:
I started with something easy and delicious. It had no problem identifying bacon and gave a calorie count that was surprisingly low. Maybe they low ball the calories to make the user feel better about eating bacon or a stick of butter.
Next up was Hill-Man's daily dose of watermelon. He is such a healthy bastard!  Again it had no problem. Next time I'll soak the melon in Vodka and see if it or Hill-Man can figure it out.
This was very surprising because this is not only a Blueberry Muffin but a Bran Blueberry Muffin. It identified the muffin correctly which I found kind of creepy. Can the app some how smell the bran?
It had trouble with this multi-item plate. It innacurately indentified this turkey wrap as ham and the feta as cottage cheese.
Apparently it can also read labels and correctly identified this delicious Cinnabon Breakfast Snack.
At this point I became curious and decided to test it's abilities a bit further:
It had no trouble figuring out this copy of the popular Jehovah's Witness Magazine "The Watchtower" was not food. Although it does work well as fish wrap or emergency bum wipe.
Although it had no problem identifying this life changing Lettuce formed into a lovely faux-hawk display.
As well as this generous portion of Canadian Ham, again I believe it was conservative with it's calorie count as to not offend the consumer and create frustration.
Apparently a "Man's Hand with a partial tattoo on the wrist" is in the Meal Snaps data base. This is both intriguing and disturbing. The only thing I can surmise of this is that Meal Snaps recommends eating human flesh before eating something that is paper like "The Watchtower". Also, 149-223 calories for my hand? I am very fatty.
The logical next step would be to take a picture of my junk. After all, that's what a phone/camera is for.(Right Brett Favre?) Much like "The Watchtower" my penis was identified as "Not Food". Even though it is 0 calories my wife is still not putting it anywhere near her mouth.
My attempts to take the field test to the next level hit a slight snag when I was threatened by several women in the office after asking politely to photograph their breasts. I resolved the situation by procuring a copy of Penthouse Magazine and snapping a picture of Adult Film Star Tasha Reigns' ample bosom. Again the app made the claim that these were not food. I soundly dispute this claim. Especially if you put whipped cream on them.
From this study we have learned three things:
1. Technology is making it easier to fight the obescity epidemic happening in this country.
2. A "Man's Hand" is considered food but not his penis or a porn star's breasts. Good to know the next time you are stranded on an island with the cast of "Barely Legal Asses Vol. 4".
3. Including "The Watchtower" in a blog with a picture of your junk is always funny...to me anyway.
