Surgery – Diagnostic testing
Reexamination Certificate
1998-10-13
2001-09-04
Winakur, Eric F. (Department: 3739)
Surgery
Diagnostic testing
C705S003000, C600S501000, C128S920000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06283914
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND—FIELD OF INVENTION
This invention relates to a device and method for diet control; more specifically, to an autonomous portable electronic device and method that can scan barcodes and relate barcode data to a nutrition facts database. This device can extract, display, and store in a cumulative fashion the nutrition data of scanned items and will allow the user to easily determine when calorie and nutrient limits have been reached in relation to a selected diet plan.
BACKGROUND—DESCRIPTION OF PRIOR ART
Controlling one's nutrition intake is a major focus of health maintenance. Moderation of caloric and fat intake is a common concern for the public, while precise control of sodium, protein and fiber, for example, are required for segments of the population whose health has been compromised by medically important conditions.
For many years, publications listing approximate calorie/fat/sodium, etc. content of generic, and sometimes brand-name items have been commonplace on supermarket checkout stands. These were used to monitor diet and required the user to look up the food item in question, estimate serving size and write down the nutritional values found for food items. This is time-consuming, tedious and gives only a coarse estimation of diet, and also requires a high compliance level by the dieter. More recently, the FDA began requiring labeling of food products with specific nutrition facts. This allowed the consumer to gain a more precise estimation of nutrition intake by using nutrition values determined specifically for the products in question. This is a clear advantage for diet monitoring, however, the time and effort required for recording the data remain as burdensome as before.
Several solutions have been proposed that seek to overcome the difficulty of looking up foods and making lists of what and how much was eaten. One early device (U.S. Pat. No. 4,321,674 to Krames, 1982) uses keypad entry of food types coupled to a user-defined daily calorie limit. This allows the user to enter the type of food eaten, how many servings eaten, and the device compares cumulative calorie consumption for the day to the user-set value. The user will be warned if the limit has been surpassed. This device, as a nutrition monitor, suffers from over-generalization about food types, as it only allows entry of categories of food such as milk, meat, vegetables or fruit products. This method of monitoring can give an approximation of calories or other nutrients consumed but is by no means precise. Additionally, it relies on the user to decide what the make-up of the food eaten is.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,686,624 to Blum (1987) improves upon this idea by adding a database that contains food names, such as semi-skimmed milk, rather than food categories. This allows a more precise calculation to be made of nutritional value of food consumed. However, this device calls for food items to be entered by using a cipher or mnemonic code that must be looked up for each food. Sakai, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,855,945 (1989) describes a similar device, but in which a nutrition facts database can be accessed by entering actual food names via an alphanumeric keypad. While these methods of entry are a vast improvement in specificity for particular food item nutrition data, they still present several challenges for the user, as do all the previous efforts described herein. Most notably, entry by typing on a keypad is non-ideal for several reasons. First, and most importantly, it is a slow inefficient way to enter data. Second, one can easily imagine a user who is not proficient in the language in which the database is stored, will have difficulty in correctly entering food names, codes or the like, in a language with which he is not familiar. Third, manual entry by typing of food names is an obstacle to use of the device by those with minimal language skills in any language, and to those who have difficulties with dexterity.
Another limitation of the aforementioned patents is that their food databases are keyed to food names or categories. The prevalence of specific brand formulations and the differences between these formulations with respect to nutrition are becoming increasingly important in today's marketplace. One can have only limited expectations that different brands of a particular food type will be similar in nutrition value, therefore, narrowing nutrition data to generic descriptions of food items will in all probability be misleading for the dieter and result in erroneous assumptions about one's nutritional intake.
The problem of strictly generic databases has been addressed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,891,756 to Williams (1990), wherein the device and method of operation are fundamentally the same as that of Sakai, but a brand-specific database has been provided rather than a purely generic food item list. This idea is important, changing the nature of the device to one in which the user no longer has to guess what the components of foods are, rather a specific branded food such as Kellogg's Corn Flakes can be entered. However, the database of this patent is arranged in a hierarchical manner, where the user is required to sift through multiple levels of food groups to finally arrive at the food item desired to be entered. This is clearly tedious and time-consuming. Also, the disadvantage of using manually typed entry still limits the usefulness of this device. Finally, the nutritional database that is proposed is not updatable, so that no new information can be entered into the device. This of course precludes being able to identify new products that are introduced in the market after the device has been programmed.
The prior devices are therefore firstly limited by the requirement for item identification entry through a keyboard which means that some ability to make food identification and to type is involved. Generally, none of these devices can be described as simple to use, based on the amount of decision-making and/or keystroke entry that is required to use them. They are secondly limited by databases that cannot be updated.
A more simple and novel method of identifying food items is through the unique identifier provided by product label barcodes, such as are commonly used in commercially prepared foods. Barcode scanning is quick and basically demands no decision making by the user. Product barcode scanning rather than keypad entry for food identification has been introduced. U.S. Pat. No. 5,478,989 (1995) to Shepley discloses a device that compares nutrition information about specific products with personal health data of the user. A nutritional database in which products are related to their corresponding nutrition facts by barcode is proposed as the source for nutrition information. This device aids consumers in making informed food choices with respect to nutritional value and predicts desirability of individual food items based on personal information input into the device by the user. This system is directed to making favorable food choices but is primarily predictive meaning that it may be used to make decisions about which foods to buy or consume. What is not provided is a retrospective cumulative survey of what and how much was actually consumed, in other words, the device is not a monitor of eating activity, but rather an aid to choosing nutritionally correct foods.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,412,564 to Ecer (1995) discloses a device that allows users to obtain nutrition information about the products they buy in grocery stores and restaurants, which may be entered by scanning barcodes and which information is stored on a smart card. General breakdowns of nutrition are made by averaging all purchased items and dividing the values obtained by numbers of days and numbers of household members over which the food is distributed. Thus, for example, a family could determine that its average “fat calories as % of total calories” was 30%. This information, while informative in a general sense, is not specific for a single person unless that person is the unique user of the system, because inf
Kocher Jean-Pierre A.
Mansfield Elizabeth A.
Astorino Michael
Kananen Ronald P.
Kocher Jean-Pierre
Rader Fishman & Grauer
Winakur Eric F.
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