The makeup, nutritional value and even the weight of your evening meal could soon be recorded and tracked by the plate it’s served on.

That future involves the SmartPlate, an intelligent dinner plate that’s full of cameras and sensors that have the ability to record and quantify all of the food that is placed in its three sections according to weight, calorie count and nutritional value.

And yes, that means you could some day be told by your dinner plate that what you’re eating isn’t very good for you, or that you’re eating too much as the plate has a built-in scale that weighs everything too.

All of the collected data is made available to you via an app that works on both iOS and Android, and the SmartPlate’s appeal lies in its ability to track your meals over time, and build a database of your eating habits that you can use to make better food choices.

The SmartPlate is the brainchild of a Philadelphia-based startup, Fitly, which has opened a Kickstarter campaign to get the SmartPlate prototype into production and, ultimately, retail.

Fitly is asking for a minimum donation of $99 – R1 200 – if you want a SmartPlate, and apparently they can be shipped anywhere in the world, with shipping costs varying according to destination. That’s a lot of money for a dinner plate, but still only half as much as the final retail price, which the Kickstarter page says will be $199.

That’s R2 400 for a single dinner plate. Not even the fact that you will be able to choose from several colours is much of a consolation, plus you can’t put it in the microwave as that would fry its sensitive sensors.

While I think the idea is smart and quirky, whether it’s going to prove a smash-hit with the food-eating public in the long term is rather uncertain. As of right now, the Kickstarter has raised $15 456 of its $100 000 goal with 45 days still to go so it could well succeed, at least as far as making it into production goes.

Watch the proof-of-concept video below, and let us know what you think.

[Source – Kickstarter]