The Refrigerator of the Future

Researchers at the University of Central Lancashire in England are developing a refrigerator with the grocery delivery service Ocado that will help people count calories, keep an inventory of their food, and come up with recipes. Discoblog thinks this will promote laziness. I think this will promote people eating food they buy and prepare themselves. (Psssst: That’s better than takeout!)

While currently just a “gleam in its designer’s eye,” the Fridge of the Future will have the technology to scan its own contents, order groceries automatically, and suggest recipes using the products contained within. It also self-cleans, triages food (by moving older items to the front of the shelves), detects food going bad, and keeps a food diary to help you stick to your diet.

This is one of those situations where technology is helping, not substituting. A lot of people don’t like dieting because there’s a lot to keep track of (like math – dreaded, forgotten math). But this kind of thing is what will do the dirty work for you, freeing up the time to work out, do the lazy-person things you did before for a few extra minutes, and even shop for you. It saves on travel and gasoline because it’s ordering groceries for you! If you opened your fridge to make a meal that needed an onion, and your last onion is covered in fur, that sucks. Either you skip making the meal entirely and order Chinese food or you make the trip to the store, putting off dinner another hour, so you’ll skip working out and watch Hoarders instead. Unproductive.

This fridge would have ordered a new onion for you days ago. When the fuzz first grew. And you would have done yoga that night because you’d watched the 10:00 episode of Hoarders and didn’t care about the possum they found in the 11:00 episode. What, this hasn’t happened to you?

I want that fridge. Please, scientists, make this happen, and please let me win one in a contest.

(via Discoblog)