Device Shows If Your Food Has Harmful Bacteria On A Phone App, And Stop 4.2 Lakh Annual Deaths

As per World Health Organization estimate, more than 600 million -- or almost 1 in 10 people in the world -- fall ill due to contaminated food, leading 420,000 deaths every year. Children under the age of five carry 40% of the food poisoning disease burden, with 125,000 deaths every year.

Needless to say, this is appalling. It's also surprising that no technology solution has been built to address this issue -- until now that is.

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Researchers have developed a novel portable device that can perform chemical tests on food samples to detect harmful bacteria, an advance that may lead to quicker ways of preventing foodborne epidemics.

According to the team of researchers, some of which hail from Purdue University in the US, the innovative device uses low light to detect the presence of E. coli bacteria in the food.

The team built an electrical circuit with a signal amplifier attached to certain components that send the nutritional data to laptops and smartphones over Bluetooth, which makes accessing that information relatively simple.

Not that this type of technology hasn't been tried before, but it's implementation is better than anything that existed before. The device offers "higher sensitivity, lower cost, better portability and other distinct advantages when compared to existing detection methods," claims Bruce Applegate from Purdue University.

To show the proof of concept, the Purdue team tested the device with artificially contaminated samples of ground beef from a local grocery store. They injected E. coli into the beef samples and then used their device to analyze the sample within 10 hours of inoculation, according to a press announcement.

Purdue University

Echoing Applegate's thoughts, Euiwon Bae, study co-author from Purdue University said, "Our goal is to create technology and a process that allows for the cost-effective detection of the causes of foodborne illness using an easy, expedient, and efficient process."

"This time frame allows for better integrated detection and quicker action to stop more people from getting sick," Bae said.