If you have bought food, stored in the fridge and then forgotten about some of them, only to find out that your favorite ice-cream has expired then don’t feel bad just for the ice-cream. Feel bad for your lost money as well. Unfortunately, you are not the only one with this problem.

Research suggests that an average family in the U.K. wastes food of worth £700 every year, which means you could potentially end up saving £700 every year. But given our daily routine, it is practically challenging not to waste food at all, and a big reason for such food waste is due to overbuying and then them not being consumed within the expiry date. But an engineer has a simple solution to this problem.

Somdip Dey, a software engineer and scientist from the University of Essex, has built a simple mobile application, ReMe Basket, which allows users to update the food items you purchase and register their expiry dates, so that users can be reminded using colour coding and notification to consume the items before it hits the expiry date. This colour coded reminder system, red when it’s about to expire and green when it has pristine consumption quality, is an efficient way of keeping consumers on track of the food they are buying and the food they are consuming.

Somdip says, “ReMe Basket would not just remind you of your food’s expiry date but at the same time suggest you intelligent recipes based on the food items that you have bought. Additionally, it is very easy to save the food items in the app because we have got cutting edge technology such as voice recognition, optical text recognition, barcode reader, etc. built in the app to make the process of saving the items easy.” Somdip has also confirmed that he is later planning to bring artificial intelligence in the app so that it could automatically detect which food items are bought the most or wasted the most so that the app could suggest the user on the shopping list.

Although the app is only available on Google play store, making it only available for Android-based smart-phones at the moment, but extended release on the iOS platform is also being discussed. But for the moment if you are on Android and are worrying about food waste due to “gone-off” date on your food, then you don’t have to worry at all. Just download the app for free and start using the features to start saving money. Thus a mobile app to suggest recipes and remind you of the expiry date is not a myth anymore, it is possible indeed.

Published by Wendy Stokes