System for managing the nutritional content for nutritional substances

Abstract

Disclosed herein is an information encoding, marking, tracking, and transmission system for information related to nutritional substances, including nutritional content. Upon the creation of a nutritional substance, whether grown, raised, caught, collected or synthesized, information regarding the nutritional substance is accumulated, encoded and referenced to the particular nutritional substance. This information can be marked directly on the nutritional substance, but can instead be stored elsewhere, and referenced to the nutritional substance by means of a marking, unique identifier, a unique inherent property, unique genetic attribute, or an induced genetic attribute. A consumer of the nutritional substance can use this reference to retrieve the information regarding the creation of the particular nutritional substance.

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS OR PRIORITY CLAIM[0001]This application is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13 / 485,850, filed May 31, 2012, which claims priority to U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 61 / 624,993 filed Apr. 16, 2012; U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 61 / 624,999, filed Apr. 16, 2012; and U.S. Provisional Patent Application, 61 / 625,009, filed Apr. 16, 2012, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0002]The present invention relates to an integrated system for collecting, transmitting and acting upon information regarding the nutritional content of nutritional substances. The invention provides methods and systems for correlating nutritional substances to their origins. The origin information may be further correlated to the nutritional value of said nutritional substance.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0003]Nutritional substances are traditionally grown (plants)...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0017]It is an object of the present invention to obtain information as to the creation / origin of a nutritional substance, whether it is grown, raised, caught, recollected or synthesized, location from where the nutritional substance originated and the like. Such information could be accessed by users or consumers of the nutritional substances by means of identification of specific nutritional substances. The means for identification of a nutritional substance is done by identifying a unique attribute of the nutritional substance that can be used to reference the creation / origin information. Alternately, identification can be done by modifying the nutritional substance in a fashion which does not affect the nutritional quality or taste of the nutritional substance and allows the nutritional substance to be uniquely identified to reference the creation information.

[0018]It is an object of the present invention to obtain information as to the creation / origin of a nutritional substance, whether it is grown, raised, caught, collected, or synthesized. Such information could be accessed by users or consumers of the nutritional substances by means of identification of specific nutritional substances. The means for identification of a nutritional substance is done by identifying a unique genetic attribute of the nutritional substance that can be used to reference the creation information. Alternately, identification can be done by modifying the genetic attributes of the nutritional substance in a fashion which does not affect the nutritional quality or taste of the nutritional substance and allows the nutritional substance to be uniquely identified to reference the creation information.

[0022]In another embodiment of the present invention, information as to the creation / origin of a nutritional substance, whether it is grown, raised, caught, collected, or synthesized is referenced by identification of a nutritional substance by a unique genetic attribute of the nutritional substance that can be used to reference the creation information. Alternately, identification can be done by modifying the genetic attributes of the nutritional substance in a fashion which does not affect the nutritional quality or taste of the nutritional substance and allows the nutritional substance to be uniquely identified to reference the creation information.

[0024]In an embodiment of the present invention provides a system for the creation, collection, storage, transmission, and / or processing of information regarding nutritional substances so as to improve, maintain, or minimize degradation of nutritional, organoleptic, and / or aesthetic value of nutritional substances. Additionally, the present invention provides such information for use by the creators, preservers, transformers, conditioners, and consumers of nutritional substances. The nutritional information creation, preservation, and transmission system of the present invention should allow the nutritional substance supply system to improve its ability to minimize degradation of nutritional, organoleptic and / or aesthetic value of the nutritional substance, and / or inform the consumer about such degradation. The ultimate goal of the nutritional substance supply system is to minimize degradation of nutritional, organoleptic and / or aesthetic values, or as it relates to ΔN, minimize the negative magnitude of ΔN. However, an interim goal should be providing consumers with significant information regarding any change, particularly degradation, of nutritional, organoleptic and / or aesthetic values of nutritional substances consumers select and consume, the ΔN, such that desired information regarding specific residual nutritional, organoleptic, and / or aesthetic values can be ascertained using the ΔN. Entities within the nutritional substance supply system that provide such ΔN information regarding nutritional substances, particularly regarding degradation, will be able to differentiate their products from those who obscure and / or hide such information. Additionally, such entities should be able to charge a premium for products which either maintain their nutritional, organoleptic, and / or aesthetic value, or supply more complete information about changes in their nutritional, organoleptic, and / or aesthetic value, the ΔN.

Problems solved by technology

While the collectors and creators of nutritional substances generally obtain and / or generate information about the source, history, caloric content and / or nutritional content of their products, they generally do not pass such information along to the users of their products.

There is generally no consumer access to, and little traceability of, information regarding the creation and / or origin, preservation, processing, preparation, or consumption of nutritional substances.

While there has recently been greater attention by consumer organizations, health organizations and the public to the nutritional content of foods and beverages, the food and beverage industry has been slow in responding to this attention.

While each of these silo industries may be able to maintain or increase the nutritional content of the foods and beverages they handle, each silo industry has only limited information and control of the nutritional substances they receive, and the nutritional substances they pass along.

Finally, the consumer of the dinner will likely not express opinions on the quality of the dinner, unless it was an especially bad experience, where the consumer might contact the producer's customer support program to complain.

However, the producer of the ready-to-eat dinner, in the prior example, has very little information to share other than possibly the source of the elements of the ready-to-eat dinner and its processing steps in preparing the dinner.

Generally, the producer of the ready-to-eat dinner does not know the nutritional content and organoleptic state and aesthetic condition of the product after it has been reheated or cooked by the consumer, cannot predict changes to these properties, and cannot inform a consumer of this information to enable the consumer to better meet their needs.

The preparation of the nutritional substance for consumption can also degrade the nutritional content of nutritional substances.

For example, in the milk supply chain, at least 10% of the milk produced is wasted due to safety margins included in product expiration dates.

While grocery stores, restaurants, and all those who process and sell food and beverages may obtain some information from current nutritional substance tracking systems, such as labels, these current systems can provide only limited information.

Nutritional substances collectors and / or producers, such as growers (plants), ranchers (animals) or synthesizer (synthetic compounds), routinely create and collect information about their products, however, that information is generally not accessible by their customers.

Even if such producers wished to provide such information to their customers, there is no current method of labeling, encoding or identifying each particular product to provide such information (even though all plants, animals and in general, nutritional substances have a natural fingerprint).

While there are limited methods and systems available, they are excessively costly, time consuming, and do not trace, or provide access to, the nutritional substance organoleptic and / or nutritional state across the product's lifecycle.

An important issue in the creation, preservation, transformation, conditioning, and consumption of nutritional substances are the changes that occur in nutritional substances due to a variety of internal and external factors.

Because nutritional substances are composed of biological, organic, and / or chemical compounds, they are generally subject to degradation.

This degradation generally reduces the nutritional, organoleptic, and / or aesthetic values of nutritional substances.

However, being able to consume nutritional substances at the farm, at the slaughterhouse, at the fishery, or at the food processing plant is at least inconvenient, if not impossible.

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