Edible RFID tags describe food

A student at the Royal College of Art in London, Hannes Harms, has designed an edible radio frequency identification (RFID) chip, part of a system called NutriSmart, reports Gizmodo.

The chip can send information about food to a personal computer or a mobile phone via a Bluetooth connection.

The idea is that it can send nutritional data and ingredients for people who have allergies, or calorie-counting for those on diets, or even telling a fridge when the food has gone off.

According to Cnet, the edible tags could hold information about where the food was grown or shipped from, what the ingredients are, how far it has travelled, and what the nutritional content is.

ExtremeTech says by embedding data into food, scientists can track food, and better understand eating habits and the effect on the food chain.

In recent years, smaller RFID tags, about the size of a grain of rice, have been used for medical diagnostics. Now, as tags get even smaller and printable, edible RFID tags made with carbon nanotube ink becomes a reality.