University Professor Attempts To The Measure Nutrition Level of Groceries
University Professor Attempts To The Measure Nutrition Level of Groceries
Jan 4, 2016 1:00 AM
SALT LAKE CITY — How healthy is the food you're buying? You have the nutrition label on that box of Frosted Flakes, but do you know how to count the calories? Decode the sugar content? Do the math when you add a bowl of milk or a cup of juice?
Technology being developed by John Hurdle, a professor of biomedical informatics at the University of Utah, could make those mental gymnastics unnecessary.
Ten years ago, it occurred to Hurdle how little doctors know about what people eat.
"We know how to put lab values in front of blood pressures and stuff like that," he said.
But for all the medical data, family history or medication history that doctors can summon with a click, "they have nothing on diet or nutrition, even though we know it's a hugely important component of people's health," Hurdle said.
Last year, Hurdle developed a software called QualMART that analyzes the nutritional quality of your grocery basket directly from the sales data.