A professional kitchen can be an extremely demanding environment, not just for the chef, but also for the food, with multiple dishes on the menu, each requiring a diverse range of ingredients. The potential for cross-contamination, or of chilled food becoming dangerously warm, is high.

Matt Steel has designed an electronic device that clamps tight to the front of a custom-designed food container. The food name can be scribbled onto the built-in erasable membrane screen. One of five food sensitivity settings is then selected. The temperature history of the contents is then automatically monitored every minute. Using this data, an onboard microprocessor calculates an “active use-by-date” based on microbe growth rate models. The device predicts the quality of the content, no matter how variable the conditions. The “active use-by-date” is displayed on a small LCD screen as the number of days remaining before expiry.

The device is re-usable and can easily be detached from the food container for cleaning purposes.

Developed primarily for chefs, the device would equally function in the home kitchen and its technology could be adapted for other industries: for monitoring temperature sensitive pharmaceuticals, items in laboratories, for food transportation, etc.