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Shopping cart helps consumers make smarter food choices

By | April 25, 2012, 8:46 AM PDT

Lambent Shopping Trolley Handle

Lambent Shopping Trolley Handle

An innovative shopping cart handle provides a way for consumers to make health-conscious decisions and cut time spent grocery shopping. The Lambent Shopping Trolley Handle allows users to scan a product in the grocery store and receive information about it–like whether it contains allergens, is organic, or was grown locally (shown in ‘food miles’). The technology also allows them to compare their own choices to that of other shoppers and see, for instance, if they tend to buy food from more miles away than the average shopper does.

The Lambent Shopping Trolley Handle is a 16-LED multi-color display that can snap on to any grocery cart. It’s a result of the Change Project, a collaboration between four British Universities to design technology that changes human behavior. They joined forces with Indiana University, the Innovative Retail Lab in Germany and one more UK-based university to develop the Lambent Shopping Trolley Handle.

A study of the Lambent Shopping Trolley Handle found that such technology did serve to influence food choices. Nearly 75 percent of shoppers using the handle were more likely to choose products with lower food miles than they did when they shopped without it. By providing quick and easily accessible information for shoppers as they move their products from shelf to shopping cart, this technology could offer a way for consumers to make smarter and more sustainable food choices without really having to think about it.

[via Discovery News, Fast Company]

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Jenny Wilson

About Jenny Wilson

Jenny Wilson was a contributing editor for SmartPlanet from 2011 to 2012.

Jenny Wilson

Jenny Wilson

Contributing Editor

Jenny Wilson is a freelance journalist based in Chicago. She has written for Time.com and Swimming World Magazine and served stints at The American Prospect and The Atlantic Monthly magazines. She is currently pursuing a degree from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.

Follow her on Twitter.

Jenny Wilson

Jenny Wilson

Jenny Wilson does not hold any investments in the technology companies she covers.

She writes for SmartPlanet and is not an employee of CBS.

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-1 Votes
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It will not help much.
Unless it zaps the person and says - put down the twinkies and go get some carrots.-
Posted by Hates Idiots
25th Apr 2012
0 Votes
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Way to late
If at the point in someones life that they are shopping as an adult and they need a shopping cart to tell them what is healthy or not then it is way to late and will have little to no impact. Learning to eat healthy and enjoy healthy food has to start from the first day a child starts to eat solid food. If mom gives them twinkies all the time then that will become the comfort food. If mom gives them carrot sticks and apple slices then that will become the comfort snack food of choice. Forget about a shopping cart making an impact on anyone unless the idividual cannot think on thier own and is trained to follow the carts instructions no matter what from an early point in life. We are our experiences, not shopping cart following drones!
Posted by pduffy211
26th Apr 2012
0 Votes
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???
This will never work!
Posted by Paul D. Martin
26th Apr 2012
0 Votes
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Nonsense
"ffod miles" is hardly a gauge of sustainability. A farmer 200 miles away may be much more efficient (higher bushels per acre produced) than my neighbor across the street. One other big problem - who cares? I buy the best produce I can find at the price I am willing to pay. I could care less if it comes from farmer Joe down the road or from Chile.

Who will pay for the devices - cerainly not the retailer because they usually have about 600 carts in a store and they will get no return from this unless it is an "image" thing with a niche target market.
Posted by Voice of Reason 1
26th Apr 2012
+1 Vote
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Twinkies
The reason people buy Twinkies instead of "apple slices and carrot sticks" isn't because the were raised improperly or they are ignorant to "healthy food choices" as the smug food police would have you believe. It is because Twinkies TASTE BETTER.
Posted by Voice of Reason 1
26th Apr 2012
0 Votes
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an important tool
i could only dream of the day when these will be widespread in grocery stores. they may not cause someone to choose an "apple over a twinkie", but knowing the true content of your food is hard, and if this helps - i'm all for it! i think anyone with a food allergen who has spent countless hours reading every little bit of writing on the back of the food label will cry with joy over something like this!!!
Posted by mrs.cats
28th May
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