The IQ of your kitchen may increase dramatically thanks to a new batch of smart appliances, including Samsung’s Family Hub, which among other things, lets you know when food is about to expire. The SmartPlate analyzes the caloric and nutritional makeup of anything that’s served on it. But it won’t judge you for second helpings, thankfully.
History is full of kitchen innovations that have made life easier. Refrigerators, for example, replaced the need to haul giant blocks of ice into the house. And electric egg beaters replaced the need to whip a wire whisk really, really fast. Now, a new wave of culinary inventions – all Internet enabled and connected to our smartphones – is promising some of the most radical improvements to food preparation and storage yet. These new tools, dubbed "smart appliances," are here to make you slimmer, savvier and more organized.
The SmartPlate, designed by San Francisco-based Fitly, is being released just in time to help prevent a Christmas binge-fest (the first models started shipping at the end of November). Via smartphone image recognition and a detachable weighing scale (which weighs 1.5 pounds, less than an iPad), the platter ($99 U.S.) instantly analyzes the caloric and nutritional composition of everything on the plate. The information gets logged in a phone-based diary and is tracked towards any number of goals – bulking up muscle, say, or, more likely, shedding all that holiday stuffing.
It also links to a database of 400,000 pre-packed food items and 650 restaurant menus, so there you can also track what you eat when you're eating out. That said, "It's an agnostic tool," explains Fitly founder and SmartPlate inventor Anthony Ortiz. "If it notices that you're eating white rice, it doesn't shame you. It only offers nutrition tips if you want it to."
Samsung's Family Hub refrigerator ($6,999) likely won't help with weight loss, but it will help with just about everything else, save for raising the kids. And even there it might make a difference thanks to built-in speakers and a touch screen on the door, which can mirror what's playing on your smartphone, so parents can distract their little ones with Netflix while preparing dinner. The touch screen also syncs with everyone's phone calendars to help schedule activities, pick-ups and appointments.
The Family Hub's perks include helping with meal planning by suggesting recipes and sending alerts when food in the fridge is about to expire. Its built-in cameras can confirm whether or not you are out of eggs while browsing the grocery store. And lastly, the temperature settings are adjustable, depending on what's being kept cool. Stocked to the point of bursting for a huge Christmas dinner? The humidity and temperature levels can shift to keep everything fresh despite the capacity load.
A smart fridge deserves to be paired with an equally intelligent oven, which is where Miele's new Dual Fuel Smart Oven ($9,999) comes in. Rather than waiting for instructions on how to cook something, it offers advice. If a guest requests their steak rare, a built-in touch screen will suggest the right temperature range and cooking time. Likewise, if you favour a certain method for baking cookies, it logs the settings in case you can't remember exactly how hot to set the temperature the next time around. And perhaps most importantly, any nagging fears that you accidentally left the stove on can be instantly squashed without frantically returning home – the appliance links to a smart phone that can turn it on or off.
With utensils that help shed pounds, a fridge that dispenses recipes and a stove that knows more about cooking than you do, there's only one job left for you in the kitchen: to drink wine. And there's even a smart appliance that helps with that. The iSommelier Smart Decanter ($1,699 U.S.) quickly and efficiently filters out impure air and filters in concentrated oxygen. It links to an app that recommends ideal decanting and oxidization settings for specific vintages, and also has an option to input preferences based on your own palette. "Everyone has a different mouth feel," explains Jackson Nai, who works for the French company iFavine, which produces the device, "so it's a very personal process." Now, if there was only an app to clear the table and fill the dishwasher.