Tracking food with your Cell Phone
by EcoGeek.org 
on 11.24.06
Food is a complex issue, and, frankly, food packaging is getting crowded. We need to tell where it came from, what it contains, the labor conditions of it's harvest, how it's going to taste, if it's good for us, and whether we're getting a good deal. Which is why I will now predict a future where our cell phones can scan a barcode, and tell us everything we'd ever want to know about a product.
Why am I so confident in my prediction? Well...uh...they're already doing it in Japan. After a breakout of Mad Cow in 2001, Japan's Food Safety Commission began to tag more and more foods with radio frequency or QR tags that contain information on the origin of foods. Almost all cell phones sold in Japan today contain QR code readers, and the Japanese Food Safety commission has already begun to notice preferential purchase of locally grown foods due to the QR tags. It turns out that knowing more about food actually results in buyers making better decisions...who'd have guessed!? Now I guess we're just going to have to wait for the rest of the world to catch up.
See also Mobile Phone Helps with Wholesome Food Choices.
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