The Innovation Fund is a four-week crowdfunding competition that gives VFA Fellows the opportunity to launch their business ideas and projects. Eleven Fellow-led teams are off to the races sharing their new ventures with the world and hustling to raise as much money as possible on Indiegogo.
In 2016, it is a basic truth that technology drives and shapes human behavior. As an example, consider navigation. Prior to the propagation and ubiquity of smartphone based turn by turn navigation, having a sense of direction was a much more valued human skill than it is now. While turn-by-turn navigation has undoubtedly made transit more convenient, it is now far more acceptable than at any point in human history for a human being to have no sense of direction. Perhaps that is a desirable change, enabling humanity to focus our collective efforts on more pressing issues. But taken to an extreme, technology designed exclusively for convenience has the potential to create a future such as the one depicted in WALL-E, where humanity’s dependence on technology reaches a level where our capacity for self-sufficiency is threatened.
Consequently, it is imperative for technology developers to consider the change in human behavior their technology will create. As technology is adopted at scale, existing standards for human behavior and interaction will inevitably be rendered obsolete, which poses an ethical burden on technology developers to consider the changes they may impose. One example of this is the development and adoption of rice cookers. Prior to the development of rice cookers, there existed many different cooking methods for rice, each of which had different effects on the texture and nutritional characteristics of the cooked rice. One of these methods, commonly used in the Indian subcontinent, was to cook rice al-dente, where the rice was boiled in excess water and the excess water was drained out after the rice was mostly cooked. This process requires monitoring and a human presence to drain out the water at the right time. With the convenience provided by rice cookers, humans have understandably shifted to using rice cookers in lieu of cooking rice al-dente. However, what happens when this change has unintended consequences?
Recent scientific studies are showing a correlation between white rice consumption and Type 2 Diabetes, particularly in Asian populations. In fact, South Asian Americans are 7x more likely to be diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes than the average American. Furthermore, preliminary research indicates that 28% of Bangladeshis in NYC have diabetes. These are communities that have eaten rice as a staple food for millennia, so how is it that these health problems are just now being noticed? One contributing factor could be the adoption and increased use of rice cookers in these communities. Because the cooking method used to cook a food affects its Glycemic Index, the change in rice preparation could theoretically have a huge impact on human health. To test this hypothesis, I had samples of rice cooked using a rice cooker and rice cooked al-dente comparatively tested for nutritional value at a food lab. To my surprise, the test results showed that rice cooked using a rice cooker had over 25% more carbs and calories than rice cooked al-dente. No wonder the rate of diabetes is skyrocketing! Each cup of rice now has over 25% more carbs, over 25% more calories, and a higher Glycemic Index than it did prior to the widespread use of rice cookers. When you eat at least two cups of rice per meal, at least twice a day, at least five days a week, that 25% adds up to a massive nutritional change.
Asking people to make significant dietary changes or give up the convenience provided by technology are impractical solutions. So the way to solve this is to develop technology that allows for convenience while maintaining the good parts of the old way of doing things. In the case of rice cookers, it is to develop technology that provides modern convenience with the health benefits of the traditional al-dente cooking process. That is precisely what we aim to do at Simple Kitchen with our first product Al-Dente, a rice cooker that cooks healthier rice.
As shown by Figure 3, unlike traditional rice cookers, Al-Dente works by boiling rice in excess water and draining out the excess. Because starch from the rice dissipates into the surrounding water as it is cooked, the excess water contains starch that would get absorbed by the rice in a traditional rice cooker. Al-Dente drains out this starch, which enables a healthier lifestyle!