My father rarely, if ever, food-shopped.  But, when it was summer time, he would venture into that foreign country (the supermarket) and choose cantaloupe, honeydew, watermelon, and a few other tasty treats.   Up until his garden (one which took hours of his time every day off) and actually consisted of about 10% of home acreage.  (Given the fact that the home employed 30 to 50% [two different homes], this constituted a great portion of what used to be green lawn.  (Yes, we had the greenest lawns in the neighborhood, too.)

And, my father taught me how to choose fruit, too.  He also taught me how to grow all sorts of vegetables.  However, I have never really picked up the habit.  I relished my free time with my kids and knew the typical result of forcing them to join me in such escapades.

Since I generally did the food shopping,  it meant that the fruit chosen was either ripe- or would be ripe in a day or two.   So we had succulent desserts, fresh fruit salads (with cottage cheese) for light dinners, etc.

But, my friends- they never learned that skill.  (Oh, sure, they claim they know.  I’ve learned to skip the fruit when visiting, though.)  But, maybe no one will ever have to learn that key culinary skill.

Because a tech startup from Israel (of course) has developed the SCiO. This keychain sized device uses light beams to scan a food item.  Discerning if it’s ripe, the caloric value, and the sugar/fat content.  They claim it works for cheese, meat- even gasoline (to ensure it’s not watered-down) and drugs.  (See my post on drug tracking to cut down the ability to pass counterfeit ones.)  The firm even hopes to have farmers use the device to discern when the perfect time to harvest their crops.

In essence, the device shrinks a spectrophotometer (the kind I used in the lab for decades) to the size of a coin.  And, then couples that coin-sized chip with near-infrared light.   That light “excites” the molecules in an object, which then “spill their beans” to the device.

That is the key to this product.  By using low-cost optics and signal processing algorithms, Consumer Physics was able to shrink the size of the device required dramatically.  Once the data is collected, it is sent wirelessly  to the cloud, where the spectrum analysis is compared and dissected.  The results are then sent back to the device in the consumer’s hand.  Ok. To the smartphone to which this device is linked via Bluetooth.

Consumer Physics got its initial funding via Kickstarter (one of the biggest ever in Israel, raising $2.7 KK).  And, hopes soon to further miniaturize the device to fit into a smartphone.

Now, I know I just told you the “specs” of the device… but, there’s always more to the story.  Not fully cognizant of how this device works (no, they aren’t sharing this with anyone yet.), I have a few qualms about the claims.

Those spectrophotometric assays?   They are distinctive, but not absolutely unique.  So, the results are going to rely on how accurately the user tells the “cloud” what they are analyzing.  For example, ethanol (you know, alcohol in those fine wine bottles) and water have high peaks in IR analysis.  But, that won’t tell which is which or with what it is combination.  The device is going to rely upon us telling it that it’s a bottle of wine we are analyzing or a fruit that has a high water content.

But, comparing two different drugs- the real and the counterfeit?   That’s a snap, because we have a known spectrum with which to compare.  So, it either matches or it doesn’t.

I am guessing that the more we use the device and share (which is, of course, required) our data with the cloud, the better the results will be.

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