Today’s Diabetes Blog Week prompt is on Fantasy Diabetes Devices — which is just up our alley, all course! We’re all in search of the “Holy Grail” tool for diabetes care, whether that’s a dream blood glucose checker, a lancer you don’t feel at all, or a super-charged insulin delivery system…
For me personally, the fantasy device at the top of my wish list would help me better handle the one thing that’s most difficult for me: carb-counting!
I hate carb counting. I constantly underestimate what I’m actually eating. Mostly, I think, because I don’t want to admit what I’m actually eating. I’m in denial. So when I go out to eat (which is too often, I do admit) and my entree arrives, I often think, “Well, that pile of mashed potatoes couldn’t be more than 50 carbs.” Or the three slices of bread? Definitely not more than 20 carbs. And the steak or pork doused in marinades and sauces? Completely carb-free, of course!
Wrong!
Eating at home is no picnic, either. I’m convinced that food producers make it impossible to figure out serving sizes simply so you won’t even bother trying and you’ll just eat as much as you please. For instance: 2/3 cup dry rice or pasta is 46 carbs, which makes about 1.0 cups prepared, but there’s 2.5 servings for two people.
What?!
Listen, I’m a writer, not a mathematician. Clearly, I was diagnosed with the wrong illness because I’m just not cut out for all these numbers. Not only that, but even if you did know exactly how many carbs you’re eating, the food doesn’t always work the same way in your body. Carbohydrates in cereal hit me much faster than the same amount of carbs in a sandwich, for example. And I can handle the carbs in some fruits better than others.
What’s a PWD to do?!
Over the past four years, we’ve seen a ton of amazing ideas and suggestions for dream devices in our DiabetesMine Design Challenge, but I’ve never submitted my own idea (I helped behind the scenes, so that was a no-no). So I’m so excited to share with you my idea for a totally brilliant carb-counting app: The Magic Carbonator 5000!!
This carb-counting app is made for both the iPhone and the Android (gotta share the love). It’s designed so that people with diabetes take a picture of whatever they’re eating, whether an individual item or an entire plate a food, and then the app tells you not only how many carbs you’re eating, but exactly how much insulin you need to take based on your insulin-to-carb ratio. The app takes into account the amount of fat, protein, and Glycemic Index value of your food, so the dose you receive is always correct. No matter what you’re eating or where it’s from (your own kitchen or the food truck down the street), the The Magic Carbonator 5000 just knows!
Brilliant, right?
My main issue with carb-counting is that it’s such a crap shoot. When I go out to eat or if I’m at a party, or heck, even cooking a recipe out of a cookbook, you never really know how many carbs you’re eating. Sure, one dinner roll from Trader Joe’s might be 26 carbs, and so it’s easy to think that a roll of a similar size and weight at a Restaurant X is also 26 carbs. But is it? How do you really know?
Another problem the Magic Carbonator 5000 would solve: half-eaten meals. How many of you have dealt with a picky child or perhaps your own “eyes bigger than stomach” conundrum that left you with half a plate of uneaten food? The app could photograph the remaining food and tell you exactly how many carbs are left in that half sandwich or bruised banana! Perfect!
Of course, the easy answer would be: just don’t eat carbs. Ever. But really? For me, it is not realistic that I would go my entire life without eating any carbs. That’s why the Magic Carbonator 5000 would be awesome! (Hey, this is a fantasy post, right?)
There already are some apps out there that propose to give you nutritional information via photos of your food, but they don’t focus on precision carb-counting (the kind required for insulin dosing) and you still have to make adjustments for fat, protein, and the Glycemic Index, which are all things that affect your blood sugars. They also don’t calculate doses based on your personal insulin:carb ratio, which my new app would do.
While I realize the odds of the Magic Carbonator 5000 ever being created are pretty slim, there is one thing those of us who fantasize about diabetes dream devices can do to make our ideas a reality: participate in the DiabetesMine Patient Voices Contest!
The whole idea of this contest is to give PWDs in different walks of life the opportunity to tell the Powers That Be — folks like Pharma R&D and marketing executives, human interaction designers, entrepreneurs, physicians, regulatory experts, investors, health gaming developers, technology gurus and experts in mobile health platforms — what YOU want from your diabetes devices.
We have seen many advancements in diabetes products over the last few years, like the new iBGStar (which is one of our Grand Prizes!), come to fruition because patients got vocal about their needs and demands!
What you say DOES make a difference, so after you finish up today’s blog prompt, head on over to the DiabetesMine Patient Voices Contest page to find out how you can get that idea in front of people who can take it and run with it!
I feel like we were on the same wavelength today. If an enterprising app developer came up with your Magic Carbonator 5000, they could probably make a lot of money! Too bad we aren’t app developers.
Make it happen, Allison! I’d be in line to buy one
This would be amazing to have!
Oh boy could I use one of those things! When I saw my endo a couple of weeks ago he remarked “I know you’re good at counting carbs” and all I could think was ‘Boy have I got you fooled!’.
Thanks for showing some love for us Android loyalists!
I am an app developer and have thought about how to make such an app before. There are a few image recognition apps out there, have a look at oMoby for an example http://www.iqengines.com/omoby/
None of the image recognition software available today is accurate enough to act like the carbonator, but carb counting could eventually be built on top of this technology.
Right now, the best idea I have is to manually crowd-source the carb counting. Imagine an app like Instagram where you post food pictures and people comment with their carb counts. We could carb count for each other voluntarily, and have a premium option where we hire dieticians to do counts.
This app could also help us all count better, by learning from others’ photos and reference images. As a bonus, the data could eventually be used to train an automatic image recognition based app. It could also link in to other diabetes apps and websites.
If there’s a lot of interest, I’d seriously consider building this app. I’d love to hear others ideas of how it could work and the top features people would like to see in it.
@ollie
I explored recognition software too and agree it’s not feasible. What I’ve come up with that is feasible is, for restaurants, geolocating your phone, picking out nearby restaurants (4sq style), then look up their menu and cross reference against published nutrition info. All the while you can photograph food to log it, and one day, ONE DAY, recognition might be possible.
Am working on this at https://github.com/altintx/Site-Selector-Webapp/tree/v3-0 if you’re at all interested.
@Ollie — Dude, there is interest! Build, PLEEEAAASSEE!
i had a similar notion for today’s prompt but went in a different direction. i am so glad you posted about this because you did it with far more cleverness than i could have! love everything about this, especially taking a pic of the leftover food!
Ollie – run with it! Happy to chip in with feature requests, do usability testing – anything.
Hello everyone,
it’s great to see there’s interest in making the Carbonator app real
It would be good to get an idea of how many people are interested, and who could help with testing, publicity etc. I’ve put a signup form online here: http://bit.ly/J7Ndlt
Please sign up if you’re interested and I’ll see what I can do. And please share the link!
@BrianBosh that’s a really smart idea! Is there a built version of your app I can try out?
There’s a compiled version in iPhone App Store but it doesn’t do any of the functions I described. Git has some. Most is yet to be implemented.
[...] a photo of some food and have an app tell you how many carbs it has. Here’s her idea for the Carbonator 5000: This carb-counting app is made for both the iPhone and the Android (gotta share the love). It’s [...]
I’ve made a blog for the Carbonator 5000: http://carbonator5000.wordpress.com/
It needs people to use it to make it happen. If you’re interested, please share the link and leave a comment.
We can do this!
[...] to count carbs, and getting feedback makes learning easier and faster. Like Allison says in her original post, carb counting is a crapshoot. Who doesn’t get a count wrong or make a guess about a mystery [...]
[...] to count carbs, and getting feedback makes learning easier and faster. Like Allison says in her original post, carb counting is a crapshoot. Who doesn’t get a count wrong or make a guess about a mystery [...]
[...] all began on Allison Blass‘ Fantasy Diabetes Device post at Diabetes Mine. I loved Allison’s Carbonator 5000 idea, as did everyone else who left [...]
[...] you checked out Allison’s Carbonator 5000 idea? I sure as heck could use one of [...]