Just What We Needed Dept: The Ikan Grocery Scanner
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto 
on 06.20.08
Here is the idea: you put this $400 scanner on your kitchen counter, and as David Pogue of the New York Times describes it: "Each time you’re about to throw away an empty container — for ketchup, cereal, pickles, milk, macaroni, paper towels, dog food or whatever — you just pass its bar code under the scanner. With amazing speed and accuracy, the Ikan beeps, consults its online database of one million products, and displays the full name and description." Review your list and send it to a participating online grocery and bingo, next thing you know they are at your door- a Netflix for groceries.
Ikan says it's green; when you pass a container through the scanner it tells you not to throw away recyclables. They also claim that "consolidating many deliveries on a single truck removes a number of cars from the road, providing an additional green benefit."
Except that a green sustainable diet doesn't have bar codes.
Every food rule we have learned from Michael Pollan tells us that this machine is evil. He tells us:
1) Eat food. (the great-grandmother kind).
2) Avoid food that makes health claims, Don't take the silence of the yams as a sign that they have nothing valuable to say about health.
3) Avoid foods with unpronounceable or unfamiliar ingredients, or any high fructose corn syrup.
4) get out of the supermarket.
5) Pay more, eat less.
6) eat leaves.
7) Eat like the French- enjoy your food, have small portions and don't snack.
8) cook.
9) Eat like an omnivore.
the Ikan tells us:
1) buy processed foods wit bar codes.
2) be unimaginative and buy what you bought before instead of experimenting.
3) don't worry about seasonal, local, fresh, or anything that would complicate the shopping process.
4) packaging is your friend.
The Ikan reinforces just about every bad habit and wrong choice in the North American diet and should be declared a health hazard. It might be better if it's million product database listed ingredients, calories, fat or vitamins and kept a running total, but no, it just keeps you coming back for more of the same crap you had last week. ::Ikan
40 years ago we were promised a kitchen computer that did the ordering but also wouldn't let dad have the cheeseburger and beer he really wanted for lunch. The Ikan doesn't even come close.
Ikan-like kitchen visions of the future
GE Kitchen of the Future
The Kitchen of the Future , 1967
1957 Frigidaire Dream Kitchen of Tomorrow- in Czech
Kitchen Design for the Future : Whirlpool's Green Kitchen Concept ...
Michael Pollan on how to eat without bar codes:
Michael Pollan : Read it and Eat ! : TreeHugger
The Silence of the Yams : TreeHugger
Quote of the Day: Michael Pollan on Eating : TreeHugger
Read Kelly Rossiter at Planet Green on how to cook without barcodes
Grow Your Own Veggies
Encourage Your Kids To Cook
Tuck Into Local, Organic Meat
Live Green. Think Local First
Make Way for Spring Vegetables
Celebrate Some More: It's the Year of the Potato
Follow @TreeHugger on Twitter & get our headlines with @TH_rss!
Thirsty for more? Check out these related articles:
I put this up there with the self-scan lines at Giant in my area. Half the customers who pass through those lanes thinking it will be faster don't have the technological IQ of roadkill, and utterly fail at scanning ONE item and putting it on the belt.
This product I think would simply amplify this issue.
I say, let the consumer shop the marketplace on his or her own. If you fail at being human sufficiently to not be able to sustain yourself in a country overflowing with food (both imported and home-grown), then go have a talk with old grandpa Darwin about your place in the species.
This screams for an anachronym, like YAUKI (Pronounced Yucky) (Yet Another Useless Kitchen Item).
I can see these flying off the shelves in yuppidom style malls, and ending up in garage sales and the Dollar A Bag bins in about 3 years along with the Tea makers and salad spinners of he past. Another useless "Use" for our precious oil reserves.
And as the author points out, you are a prisoner to the pre packaged.
Please don't waste any more of the treehugger e-space with this type of junk. It makes it difficult to search (and find) valuable articles. Thanks!
ile
In all fairness to LA, this was a very effective (and deliberate) way to re-iterate the wisdom of Micheal Pollan.
What I want is a scanner you can take to the grocery store, scan stuff, and it will do an online lookup and tell you where to find the product cheaper....
whats wrong with salad spinners? very handy.
although this monstrosity is a real piece of crap.
If people don't have the time to make a shopping list, let alone cook their own food, they're not going to be visiting the farmer's market and cooking their own food from scratch.
Until we, as a society, insist that we slow down, work less, and spend more time at home, there will always be a huge market for prepared food, and anything that keeps us from having to spend what little free time we have in a grocery store.
It takes a concerted effort on my family's part to get out the door and down to the farmer's market to buy our groceries weekly rather than making little trips to the grocery store several times a week for ingredients we need. If we had to commute 2 hours a day and had things like little league or soccer practice, we'd have no time at all to do things like visit the farmer's market.
So for a lot of people, having a device that keeps track of what food you've used up and has them delivered just in time could be very attractive.
So you first introduce something kinda cool, and then you bash it to a pulp?
How about supporting our groceries using public transportation instead of us driving TO the market and then BACK home,
I bet it takes less energy to bring the groceries to us along with our neighbour's than moving one person (140lbs?) from every household to the market and back with the goods.
I do agree with you on processed food. I do cook.