Porto’s Faculty of Engineering has developed a mobile app that helps people with dietary restrictions to make safe food purchases, reports Sapo24.
The app, called NutriSafe, alerts consumers to products that might be dangerous to their health, providing them with data on nutritional information and the ingredients of the product, as well as nutritional 'traffic lights' (sugar, salt, fat and saturated-fat content).
Nutritional Information
In addition, it informs consumers about nutritional information (such as low-energy or high-fibre content) and alerts them, in a personalised way, if the product could be potentially unsafe, according to the profile settings of each user.
The information is obtained by reading the bar code of the product, using the consumer's smartphone camera.
The app is ideal for people suffering from allergies or intolerances, or those who simply do not want to ingest a certain ingredient. In the future, it should also become a tool in the work of nutritionists, who can monitor patients and ensure their well-being.
Speaking to the Lusa news agency, one of the project developers, Manuel Zamith, explained that NutriSafe differs from other solutions that also scan bar codes, as the latter simply count calories or provide fitness data, helping users with diet and a healthy lifestyle.
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