App that saves users money, reduces food waste

A new contributor to the “internet of things” has launched this week on the Apple App store. The EatBy Smart Kitchen App is a utility app that saves its users money and reduces food waste. It displays food stored in the kitchen, reminds users to eat food before it expires and includes an intelligent shopping list.

The UK based husband and wife team who developed EatBy, Steffan and Barbara Lewis, designed the app in a bid to help consumers save money and to tackle the massive problem of food waste.

A number of studies, including research by the UK Waste Reduction Action Programme (WRAP) have highlighted the problem of household food waste. The average UK family with children throws away around £700 ($1,000) each year. Unsurprisingly, households in consumer driven countries such as the USA and UK have been found to throw away the most food. It has been widely reported that $400 billion of food is wasted each year globally which contributes to over a billion tonnes of Co2 emissions.

The free EatBy App includes an intuitive shopping list that allows users to input the expiration date. The app then notifies the user with a reminder that something needs to be eaten. When the app is opened it clearly displays what's in the kitchen, fridge or freezer and the date it needs to be eaten by. Users of the app are now able to see what food they have in their kitchen at a glance and to make informed decisions that help reduce the amount of waste. It also cleverly allows users to quickly add recently eaten food items back onto their shopping list.

It remains to be seen if technology such as the EatBy App will help us save money and reduce the amount of food we waste, but this technology is certainly how most of us will manage our homes in the near future. The concepts of the smart fridge, and even the smart bin, have existed for a number of years. These ideas are now becoming a reality as the “internet of things” evolves, and while many of the big supermarket chains, online retailers and established technology manufacturers have been introducing their own concepts, the EatBy App is a serious independent contender as the market leading “Smart Kitchen” technology. The developers promise that the app is just the beginning as they say they are already working on new innovations that improve how we buy food, store food and manage our kitchens.

EatBy App is available for Apple and Android devices.

Visit eatbyapp.com for further information.