Innovation of the week

Here’s a kitchen gadget that could really “stir things up,” said Laura Baverman in USA Today. A startup called Orange Chef has developed the Prep Pad, a “smart food scale” that pairs with an iPad app to help users learn more about the nutritional content of their food. The user places ingredients on the scale and types a description on the iPad—say, “two zucchini or a teaspoon of cinnamon”—and the tablet then “mines a database of 250,000 foods to provide details of its nutrients and calories.” Prep Pad can then sync with another Orange Chef offering, called Countertop, to “make sense” of all the data and allow users to track—and ideally improve—their eating habits. The company recently partnered with Williams-Sonoma to hawk the device online and in stores.

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