Eat Healthier, Live Better, With Help From Samsung’s Latest Wearable Technology

Everybody has got to eat. We do it multiple times every day, year in and year out. So why are so many of us so bad at it? We pick the hamburger when we know we should be eating vegetables; we lose track of how much junk food we’ve eaten in the day; and we drink caffeine, even when it is later in the day and we should be thinking about our sleep.

But thanks to the rise of wearables and food-related apps, at last we are gaining better options for keeping track of our health and eating habits. We no longer have to rely on vague estimates and hazy recollections; now we can track what we eat as we go—and, just as importantly, what we should be eating.

Keeping Records of What We Consume

The first step in improving what we eat is knowing what we eat. And tracking our food intake is an area where devices like the Gear S2—along with Samsung’s signature smartphones, the Galaxy S6 edge+ and Galaxy Note5—excel.

Using apps like S Health, we can keep track of everything we eat and drink during the day. No more fooling ourselves by underestimating how many treats we eat or how few calories they contained. Now each day’s calorie count and nutritional profile can be easily and clearly calculated and tracked. And the Gear S2 even has a function for tracking our caffeine and water drinking, to make sure you’re getting enough of the latter and not too much of the former.

Sensors Understand Your Body

People have different levels of health. Some of us are in great shape and exercise all the time, while others struggle to find the time or willpower to exercise much at all. Some people need a lot of sleep, but other people seem to do just fine with just a few hours. If we can fully understand our bodies, our ability to maintain our health would improve a lot.

Fortunately, the Gear S2 has built-in sensors that can keep track of your body throughout the day. Heart rate is measured around the clock by the wearable, so we can know, minute by minute, what is happening to our bodies. This can then affect our diet—if your energy is flagging, maybe you take some time to stretch your legs and walk around, or have a healthy snack. (Of course, always check with your doctor first for all health advice).

Personalizing Your Diet

Too often, nutritional advice comes in a one-size-fits-all format, like people were all the same. But we aren’t the same. Some people are vegetarian or vegan, while others are focused on avoiding gluten or carbs in general. Some people need to avoid sodium or foods high in cholesterol or fat, and need to be careful about what they eat.

This is another area where technology can be a huge help. Not sure what’s in a certain dish? Your smartphone makes it easy to look up the ingredients online. More and more food companies are providing ever better data about the nutrients in their dishes, so details about calories, ingredients and more are available at our fingertips.

And in many locations (Korea, the United States and the United Kingdom), S Health can even offer health tips based on personalized user interests.

Setting the Table

Making the Gear S2 more effective is the large ecosystem of partner companies that make health apps for the device—many of which are integrated with S Health. There is a wide range of products available at the Galaxy App store, specializing in calorie counting, tracking carbs, diabetes-related health checking and more. And more food apps are continually appearing, giving people ever more options.

Food for Thought

From the individual level to society as a whole, food culture is undergoing major changes, and Samsung Electronics’ latest mobile devices and their health-related apps are a major part of that transformation. When it comes to health, living better begins with a better understanding of what we eat, and these apps provide all sorts of food-related help, just right for each person’s needs. As always, these benefits are the sort of innovations that come from Samsung’s relentless focus on meeting the needs of consumers.