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GoBe Automatic Calorie Intake Tracker

Posted: March 11, 2014
$125
Check It Out

Healbe calls its GoBe wristband a 100% automatic body manager. Like the scads of other fitness trackers available and forthcoming today, this means it detects and provides feedback on biometrics such as heart rate, blood pressure, and hydration levels. It also uses this information to figure calories burned. Nothing new there. But GoBe does stand out amongst other players in the onslaught on one key feature: it will also track caloric intake. Without user input. GoBe reads the glucose in its wearers' cells and provides a running readout of the calories they've consumed. Further, it detects this information through their skin, with no manual logging of food eaten, no quantity estimates, and no guesswork required.

GoBe caloric intake readers are possible thanks to FLOW Technology. FLOW combines a unique algorithm with measurements taken from the wristband's 3 built-in sensors to make GoBe the first body manager able to automatically determine the numerical data associated with chowing down. Sensors include: pressure, which measures blood flow and heart rate; impedance, gauging fluid level in tissues; and an accelerometer for tracking body movement and activity.

In addition to calorie counting, GoBe's FLOW Technology is also responsible for its readings on wearer heart rates, metabolic rates and calories burned during any activity, hydration levels, sleep patterns and quality, and stress levels.

Since GoBe should be worn 24 hours a day, it is completely waterproof and maintains a fairly low-profile design, the latter courtesy of Motorola V70 design team leader, Jozeph Forakis. GoBe's simple digital display scrolls through the following information:

  • Time
  • Calorie intake
  • Calories burned
  • Hydration levels
  • Heart rate
  • Blood pressure
  • Distance traveled
  • Stress levels

To view complete biometric stats and patterns, GoBe sends data via Bluetooth to its app on iOS and Android smartphones.

Healbe's GoBe seeks Indiegogo crowdfunding through April 15, 2014.

April 2014 Update: $100,000 was the ask, $970,445 was the take. I'd say GoBe's crowdfunding campaign was a success. But not, as has sadly become the case with these sorts of mega-funded projects, without a litany of red flags. One of those flags: the GoBe tracker probably cannot track what it says it can. Some are calling its glucose-sensing-through-the-skin claims both impossible, and quack science even if it were possible since calorie count is determined by more than just that one metric. Read about the possible GoBe subterfuge and Pando Daily's investigation of its legitimacy here.

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