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DECEMBER 9, 2004
By Olga Kharif High-Tech Tools for Fighting Fat From stomach-wall implants to lard-zapping ovens and calorific breath analyzers, a host of new weapons is joining the battle of the bulge In the late 1990s, Bill Curry and his wife went on an 11-day vacation to Italy. They reveled in the art, the architecture, and the music, but what they really loaded up on was the pizza, the pasta, and the gelatto. "We'd eaten our way through Italy," Curry sighs. End result: He returned home to Walpole, N.H., 20 pounds heavier. Determined to take off his newfound fat, Curry didn't turn to the usual suspects: diet books, motivational tapes, or services like Jenny Craig. Instead, he put his undergraduate engineering degree to work. The fruit of his labors is Powerseed, a diet-help gadget Curry began selling this year over the Internet for $49.95. Powerseed is something akin to an electronic version of a watchful mother. The size and shape of an egg, the gadget blinks every 30 seconds. The blink tells a dieter that it's O.K. to take another bite, the idea being to make users eat more slowly and avoid overeating, explains Curry, who claims Powerseed helped him shed his Italian-made fat, plus another two pounds in just two months. DESPERATE MEASURES. Consumers, inventors, and business are finally wedding two American obsessions: dieting and gadgets. The Powerseed is just one of dozens of new devices, ranging from personal eating aids to fat-burning ovens, that are applying high technology to America's battle of the bulge. "Obesity is so common, and we have such limited resources to fight it, we see more and more high-tech tools being developed," says Sam Klein, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis (Mo.). Many of the devices are meeting with sizable demand: Without much proof beyond anecdotal evidence that his gadget works, Curry has sold more than 1,000 units in one year. Could be that in this age of the Internet and cellular phones, using traditional books and tapes seems passé. Or it could be that "people would try even untested methods out of desperation," Klein says. FAT OF THE LAND. For whatever reason, the drive to diet is reaching a fever pitch. An average American gains seven pounds between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and nearly 40% of us make losing weight our New Year's resolution, according to various polls. Not that we don't need help during the other seasons: The average American is 25 pounds heavier than was the case 40 years ago, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. The good news for the $43 billion weight-loss industry is that Americans seem to want to shed those extra pounds more badly than ever. On any given day, 45% of American women and 25% of men are on a diet, studies show. But most dieters end up disappointed with their results. Two-thirds of the weight they lose is regained within a year, according to studies by the National Institutes of Health. BURNING CALORIES. That's where the makers of new diet-aid devices claim they can help. Six weeks ago, Sharp Electronics introduced a special oven it claims can significantly reduce foods' fat content. It's only available in Japan right now, but soon will be sold in the U.S. The oven turns water into steam heated to more than 500 degrees Fahrenheit. At that temperature, fats melt and drip into the oven's lower drain. The American version of the fat-burning oven is expected to cost about $1,300. It will be packed with features such as a special regime for cooking convenience foods, like notoriously bad-for-you chicken nuggets. The oven's fat-busting abilities could cook out some of the fat content and make guilty pleasures less of a burden on the conscience and waistline, says Daniel. The oven will be introduced in test markets in April or May. Sharp's rivals aren't telegraphing their punches, but they seem likely to follow suit. "We've made a lot of research into a similar technology, but we have no announcements at this time," says Jarred Roy, marketing manager for cooking products at appliance-maker Maytag (MYG ). "We want to see if the market will accept it." FULL FEELING. Consumers certainly seem to snap up devices that help people figure out how much they should eat. HealtheTech (HETC ) in Golden (Colo.), sells a device called BodyGem. The size of a soda-pop can, it can estimate the exact rate at which your body burns calories. Here's how it works: You breathe into a special mouthpiece for between 5 minutes and 10 minutes, and special sensors figure out oxygen intake and your resting calorie-burning rate. In the past, HealtheTech sold such devices only to dieticians and personal trainers for a steep $1,799. Now it's now test-selling a $179 package for consumers. That includes temporary rental of the device, special software for keeping track of caloric intake and expenditure, and a pedometer to track how those calories are being burned off, says Mike Clouthier, HealtheTech's vice-president of sales, marketing, and clinical trials. Where dieting alone can't do the trick, a more extreme solution will soon be available from Mt. Arlington (N.J.) outfit Transneuronix, which is making what it calls an "implantable gastric stimulator." The size of a pacemaker, the device is implanted under the skin, just below the rib cage, where it sends pulses via an insulated wire affixed to the stomach wall. The simulation makes the stomach pouch expands, producing a feeling of fullness. UNDER THE KNIFE. The stimulator is still in trials, but it has already been implanted into more than 700 patients over the past nine years. The results so far are reassuring. Within 30 months, patients have shed as much as 40% of their weight. The surgery, which will likely cost around $30,000, takes less than an hour and has shown no side effects so far, says Transneuronix CEO David Jenkins. The device is expected to gain the Food & Drug Administration's approval within three years. Of course, many of these innovations have yet to be proven effective. But with the obesity looming large, there are plenty of people willing to give them a shot.  Kharif writes for BW Online from Portland, Ore.
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