Controlling diet using a mobile phone.

New diet service... by text

A UNIVERSITY student is launching a service which allows users to control their diet using a mobile phone.

Peter Gray-Read, 49, who is studying Human Nutrition and Dietetics at London Metropolitan University, Holloway Road, Holloway, has set up Cal Count Ltd, which allows users to text in daily snacks and meals and receive a reply with their calorie count for the day.

By texting their height, weight and age users will also receive the size of their permitted waist line and by sending through their day's exercises, they will be told their daily energy balance.

Mr Gray-Read said he wanted to find a way of making dieting easier and more accessible. "I wanted to provide a service that was user friendly and that was easy for everyone.

"Most people have a mobile so I thought it was a good way of recording your food intake and exercise routine for the day," he explained.

"People can enter their meals, portion size and exercise routine and we can advise them on their calorie count. There is also a website you can go to if you don't want to text."

The service is so user friendly that there is even a list of shortened text words to allow more information to be put into the text. Milk is entered as mlk, bread as brd, oats as ots and butter as btr. The thickness of bread is represented by an increasing number of full stops and green top milk is simply mlk g.

Mr Gray-Read, who also has a degree in bio-chemistry, said: "At the moment we are working out the calories manually but we are hoping to have software installed soon that will give instant responses.

"I'm hoping the text system will make people more aware of what they are eating and help them with their diet.

Source: Archant Regional.