Know Your Food with the Tellspec Scanner

I have used the Tellspec scanner a lot lately, and have had followers ask why I have only posted on the hardware, and not the food scans.

The reason is that though the scanner is a solid beta quality product, the food database and iOS application are still a work in progress. Tellspec has not claimed anything but, so we must cut them some slack, especially since they are letting me see things early in the game, which gives you a pre-production view.

I have solid results to show now, which gives me pause about my eating habits, even though I (and my wife) consider ourselves fairly knowledgeable and healthy eaters.

Several days back, I was wondering about the purple and blue cauliflower my wife had mixed with our white cauliflower. She said it was to “add color” to our diet, but warned me that it is dyed to give the colors. As a result, I could not resist scanning it. The problem I have is that the colored cauliflower scanned the exact nutritional information that white cauliflower did.

That made me question the data I was getting from the Tellspec application. After doing some simple research, I found articles that showed the scan results were, in IMG_0348fact, correct. The colored cauliflower is not dyed – they are a naturally bred choice of cauliflower varieties with antioxidants.

The other thing I noticed was that the scans showed 7 grams of carbohydrates for a 100 gram serving of cauliflower. Again, knowing that veggies do not contain carbohydrates, I questioned the results.

I was incorrect. In fact, cauliflower does contain those carbs in that serving size**. It made me realize that it is better to know what I am eating, and live by the standards I had become accustomed to.

I scanned every color of cauliflower I could find, and scanned every place on the cauliflower. Same results, 100% of the time.

So, what else have I scanned and found accurate? Apples (Honey Crisp and Red Delicious), Skippy peanut butter, snap pea pods, broccoli.

I did scan an Oreo cookie, and the cookie itself came out correct (as a baked good). This was minus the filling.

Again, I want to say that not all foods are yet scanned into the database. The database will fill out as the beta scanning continues, and all items will start to show accurate information.

** Note: The Tellspec scanner draws nutrition information from many sources, including the USDA database. Cooking methods can, and do, affect nutrition information. For example, my wife cooks boiled cauliflower with a tad of olive oil, and adds a touch of real butter to it, so it does not exactly match the nutrition database. It is actually more accurate, because it takes these added ingredients into the scan data.

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