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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Personalized Nutrition

Introducing The Tomorrow Today Show With Mike Lee

Back in 2017, I wrote a story exploring the idea of personalized food profiles. The piece explored whether, someday, we might walk into restaurants, shop at the grocery store, or have dinner at a friend’s house and be able to communicate our food preferences and dietary restrictions in advance, shaping our entire meal journey accordingly.

The inspiration for that article came from Mike Lee, who had just spoken at our Smart Kitchen Summit in Seattle that October. During his talk, he introduced the idea of a “food passport” that could someday help personalize food experiences wherever we go. I had gotten to know Mike through his work at The Future Market, where he developed a concept store of the future for the Fancy Food Show. It didn’t take long for me to realize that Mike has a rare ability to imagine the many possible futures of our food system and to understand how technology and social change might intersect to bring those futures to life.

However, it wasn’t until he published his book Mise: On the Future of Food that I fully appreciated the breadth of his thinking and the ways he can masterfully get his ideas across. In Mise, Mike not only describes big potential technologies and changes we will wrestle with in the future, but he gave us stories of how these changes might unfold in our lives.

In short, Mike is not only skilled at identifying early signals and trends, but he’s also a master of using storytelling to illustrate how these futures might unfold, which is why I’m super excited to welcome his new show to The Spoon Podcast Network: The Tomorrow Today Show.

In his new podcast, Mike takes listeners on a weekly deep dive into the future of food, whether it’s restaurants, farming, consumer products, nutrition, or even food hedonism. Each episode features long-form conversations that go beyond surface-level takes, offering nuanced insights from some of the most thoughtful voices in the industry.

In this first episode, The Future of Restaurants, Mike has a roundtable conversation with Kristen Hawley (Expedite), Elizabeth Tilton (Oyster Sunday), David Rodolitz (Flyfish Club), and yours truly. We explore everything from the role of empathy in hospitality to why chefs are trading molecular gastronomy for comfort food like pot pies.

Season one is launched, and you can watch the first episode below or listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Make sure to subscribe, rate and review!

Mike is my guest on this week’s episode of The Spoon Podcast, so make sure to listen to that as well to hear a little more about Mike’s background.

The Future of Restaurants

January AI’s New App Uses Generative AI to Predict How Food Will Impact Your Blood Sugar

If you’ve been diagnosed with a metabolic health issue, you might have used a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) at some point to track the impact of your food intake on your blood sugar. However, as of March 2023, only 2.4 million people used a CGM in the U.S., and because of the relatively small adoption rate of this technology, the vast majority of folks with diabetes or who are in danger of metabolic health issues may not have access to real-time insights into what the impact different foods may have on their glucose levels.

January AI aims to change this with its latest innovation: a free app that performs predictive analysis on the impact of various foods on blood sugar. The company, which unveiled its newest tool at CES last week, has developed an AI-powered app that analyzes meal photos and offers users immediate feedback on glucose impacts, macros, and healthier meal alternatives.

January says its app uses generative AI to automatically generate accurate food titles and estimates of ingredients and ingredient quantities within complex meals.

“It uses three kinds of generative AI to tell you your blood sugar response,” said Noosheen Hashemi, CEO of January, speaking at The Spoon’s CES Food Tech Conference last week. “It uses our own generative AI for glucose, and then it uses a vision generative AI to pick what’s in the food, and then it uses that language model to give it a title.”

According to the company, its AI-driven predictions are based on millions of data points, including wearable data, demographic information, and user reports. The company says this approach enables the app to provide personalized glucose level estimates and insights, making metabolic health management more accessible and actionable.

“It’s as simple as scanning a food,” said Hashemi. “You can also scan a barcode. You can also do a search. And we can tell you all the macro, its total calories, how much fiber, protein, fat, and carbs it has. And we can also show your blood sugar.”

According to Hashemi, the company’s platform can be customized and trained for specific users by taking data from a wearable such as a smartwatch, a person’s glucose monitor, or even food logs. With that data, the app can create highly customized predictions around a person’s biomarkers and dietary preferences.

“One out of three people in America has pre-diabetes, and 90% of them don’t know it,” said Hashemi. “And one out of nine people has diabetes, and 20% of those people don’t know it. So blood sugar is something we should all be managing, but we just don’t know that we should.”

Given the increasing popularity of GLP-1 medications, my guess is that more Americans will start to consider how their diet affects their blood sugar in the coming years. And, even if they don’t use a glucose monitor or get a prescription for a medication like Ozempic, increased awareness will push many to use apps like this one to help them better understand how a given food will impact their blood sugar and overall health.

You can hear Hashemi discussing the app and showing a demo in the video below.

January AI CEO Talks About New Generative AI App at CES