Using Your iPhone To Test Food Ripeness at the Grocery Store?

How long until our cell phones start protecting us from food poisoning?

Should iEat? Testing Food Ripeness with a Smartphone – Technology Review.

“Everyone’s a critic,” sighs the artist. But with new smartphone technology, average folks like you and me could take our criticism to new mediums and industries entirely. “Everyone’s a quality tester,” the industrial food producer may soon be sighing.Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute is developing a miniature spectrometer that Food Production Daily says “will pave the way for instant quality analysis of whether fruit is ripe or if meat contains too much water.” The device, which is smaller than a sugar cube, uses near infrared technology to assess starch, protein, water, and fat content in food–and you wouldn’t even have to unwrap the goods to test them, since the spectrometer works across a thin layer of plastic. The device won’t be able to perform microbiological or toxicological analysis, according to Fraunhofer–but it will be able to see if food is ripe or water-logged, and give you instant advice on whether to buy or not.