CN212159540U

CN212159540U - Device for determining sugar content information of food and heating appliance for cooking food

Info

Publication number: CN212159540U
Application number: CN201890000768.0U
Authority: CN
Inventors: 金雅芳; 罗忠池; 陆伟华; 冯海涛
Original assignee: Koninklijke Philips NV
Current assignee: Fansongni Holdings Ltd
Priority date: 2017-04-28
Filing date: 2018-04-26
Publication date: 2020-12-15
Anticipated expiration: 2028-04-26
Also published as: WO2018197596A1

Abstract

The present application relates to an apparatus for determining sugar content information of a food product. An apparatus for determining sugar content information of a food product during or after cooking is described for receiving the food product and receiving a food type of the food product. The color change of the food product during or after cooking is measured. Based on the food type and the measured color change, sugar content information of the food product is determined. The present application also relates to a heating appliance for cooking food. According to the apparatus for determining sugar content information of food and the heating appliance for cooking food of the present disclosure, sugar content information of food can be automatically and conveniently determined.

Description

Device for determining sugar content information of food and heating appliance for cooking food

Technical Field

The present disclosure relates to the field of sugar content determination, and more particularly to an apparatus for determining sugar content information of a food product, a heating appliance for cooking a food product, a method for determining sugar content information of a food product, and a computer program element.

Background

Sugar is a generic term for sweet soluble carbohydrates, and many sugars are used in foods. There are many types of sugars from different sources. Simple sugars are called monosaccharides, including glucose (also called dextrose), fructose, and galactose. The "table sugar" or "granulated sugar" most commonly used as food is sucrose, glucose disaccharide and fructose. Sugar is used in prepared foods (e.g., cookies and cakes) and is added to some foods and beverages (e.g., coffee and tea). Sucrose is hydrolyzed in vivo into the monosaccharides fructose and glucose. Other disaccharides include maltose from malted grains and lactose from milk. Long chain sugars are called oligosaccharides or polysaccharides.

In our daily life, sugar consumption is very large. According to the 2008 U.S. data, people consume over 60 pounds (28kg) of added sugar per year, and the data does not include juice. The average intake in 2008 is 76.7 grams per day, which is equal to 19 teaspoons or 306 calories. According to this study, sugar consumption decreased by 23% between 2000 and 2008, mainly because people consumed less sugar sweetened beverages. However, the current level of intake is still too high and is a key factor in obesity and illness in humans. In particular, excessive sugar consumption is associated with obesity, type II diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, certain cancers, dental caries, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and the like. To support a satisfactory nutritional status of the population, it is important to know the sugar content of the food, especially for people who are dieting.

There are several nutritional databases that can be used to provide the sugar content of foods. However, for one food type, the database contains only average sugar content values. The specific components of each food product vary depending on growth, harvesting, storage and processing conditions. Furthermore, chemical analysis of the sugar content of food cannot be applied to actual home cooking situations, since such analysis can only be performed by professional operators in the laboratory and requires a relatively long time.

WO2015069325a1 discloses nutrient systems and methods that are capable of tracking and communicating changes in the nutritional, organoleptic, and aesthetic values of nutrients, and further enabling adaptive storage and adjustment of nutrients.

US2498024A discloses a method of processing raw or cooked potato granules, and in particular to bar granules for french frying to ensure that they have a desired and substantially uniform colour change when properly fried.

During fryingPotato chip appearance image characterization "it was disclosed that the purpose of this study was to evaluate the applicability of computer image analysis techniques (with a flatbed scanner for image acquisition) to measure the amount and distribution of the most important visual aspects of potato chips: color components (L, a, and b) of the surface and brown and oily areas. The potato slices were fried at three temperatures (170 ℃, 180 ℃ and 190 ℃) for three times (2 minutes, 3 minutes and 4 minutes). Preprocessing, segmentation and color analysis were performed by software programmed in Matlab V6.5. The results show that there is a high linear relationship (R) between the image RGB values and those measured by conventional colorimeters²> 0.962). The applied image analysis technique enables to distinguish the color of the potato chips with a high sensitivity after the frying process. On average, the percentages of normal, brown and oily areas detected on the samples were 53.24%, 24.04% and 22.96%, respectively. While the appearance of the brown regions is consistent with the occurrence of browning that occurs with the entity of the frying process, different results were obtained using objective color patterns to assess the extent of the oily regions on the surface of the fried potato chips. In any case, this technique represents a high potential for developing a computer-vision online system for optimizing the frying process according to the fat content of the final product.

NL1016217C2 discloses an automatic cooking unit (1) for portions of potato chips having a container (10) for storing potato chips, which container has a lower outlet opening (14) which can be closed by a first controllable valve (15). Below the storage unit is an oven (50) with an upper wall (51) in which a closable inlet opening (52) is controlled by a second valve (53) and aligned with the outlet opening of the storage unit. In the oven, below the inlet aperture is a cooking basket (60). Heating means (55, 56) are mounted to feed heat to the cooking basket. Outside the oven is a rocking mechanism coupled to the cooking basket. Between the storage container and the oven is a weighing mechanism for weighing a portion of the potato chips to be cooked.

SUMMERY OF THE UTILITY MODEL

It would be advantageous to have an improved apparatus for automatically and conveniently determining sugar content information for food products.

The object of the present disclosure is solved by the subject matter of the independent claims; further embodiments are comprised therein in the dependent claims. It should be noted that the aspects and examples of the present disclosure described hereinafter are equally applicable to an apparatus for determining sugar content information of a food product, a heating appliance for cooking a food product, a method for determining sugar content information of a food product, and a computer program element.

According to a first aspect, an apparatus for determining sugar content information of a food product during or after cooking is provided. The apparatus may include an object accommodating unit for accommodating food; an input unit for receiving a food type of a food item; a color measuring unit for measuring a color change of the food during or after cooking; and a processing unit configured to determine sugar content information of the food product based on the food type and the measured color change.

During cooking and/or heating, browning colors appear due to the MaiUard reaction and caramelization. The MaiUard reaction is a non-enzymatic browning resulting from the reaction between reducing sugars and the alpha-amino group of amino acids. Reducing sugars are an essential component of these effects, providing carbonyl groups that interact with free amino groups of amino acids, peptides and proteins. Caramelization is another example of non-enzymatic browning involving sugar degradation, and is typically performed simultaneously with the MaiUard reaction. Caramelization of the sugars significantly promotes the production of brown pigments. Thus, during high temperature cooking (e.g., > 130 ℃), the sugar content is strongly correlated with non-enzymatic browning at specific cooking conditions (pH, temperature, humidity, etc.) for a given food type. In other words, the higher the sugar content, the deeper the browning. In view of this, it is feasible to predict the sugar content (%) by color and/or image analysis of the browning level of the food product.

With the device in the context of the present application, the user can easily and conveniently obtain sugar content information without the need for chemical analysis or any other effort. Furthermore, based on experiments conducted by the inventors, the correlation of sugar content with color change was relatively high, with variance greater than 0.95. Thus, the apparatus for determining sugar content information can achieve high accuracy.

The determined sugar content information can be used to track a person's daily intake to help the person maintain a balanced diet. This is particularly useful in situations where the nutritional content of the food product is not available.

In one embodiment of the present application, the apparatus may further include a weight sensor configured to measure a weight of the food item in the object accommodating unit over time.

Measuring the weight of the food product over time helps determine food size information for the food product. For example, experiments can be performed on various cultivars of potatoes. Then, the relevant information of these different food types can be experimentally determined, so that a database of relevant information can be generated. Then, based on the food weight measured over time and knowledge of the food type of the food, specific "correlation data" for the food is actually generated. Then, the specific correlation data (measured food weight over time) for that food type may be referenced in a subset of the correlation information database relating to food types. In one example, matching the correlation data with the correlation information in the database selects food size information in the database, thereby generating matching information. This therefore determines the food size information of the food product. In this way, the apparatus is able to determine food size information for a particular food type from the weight measured over time, for example during air frying.

The determined food size information may then be used to determine appropriate cooking parameters, such as cooking temperature or temperature profile, and/or cooking duration. In other words, after the food size information is determined, a more appropriate cooking process may be selected. The determined food size information may also be used to track the doneness of the food product.

In this way, based on the information related to the type of food and the weight measurement of the food product, the size information can be calculated. The food size information may then be used to determine how well the food product can be cooked, and/or to determine when the food product is properly cooked (where properly cooked is equivalent to "cooked"). In other words, the food size information is automatically determined and can be used to allow for precise adjustment of subsequent heating strategies in an uninterrupted manner.

In addition, size information can be determined regardless of the shape of the food item. In this way, the food size information improves cooking safety and cooking efficiency and enables the food product to be better cooked to a desired "doneness" level.

Furthermore, it should be noted that potentially non-evaporative weight variations, for example due to dripping and spilling of water, fat melting or oil flow, will lead to errors. It is expected that the weight measured over time is due primarily to water evaporation. In other words, there may be dripping or spilling of water, as well as melting of fat and flowing of oil, but it is expected that these will not cause weight change. By measuring the weight of the object accommodating unit, it is advantageous to measure the weight change due to water evaporation. This is because the potentially non-evaporative weight change does not affect the weight measurement because water and fat can be accommodated within the object accommodating unit, and such dripping, overflowing, and melting of fat of water does not cause a weight change within the object accommodating unit. Then, the weight change is determined mainly for the evaporation of water, so that the food size information can be determined more accurately.

In one embodiment of the present application, the processing unit is further configured to determine a cooking endpoint based at least on the weight loss rate of the food product (depending on the weight change of the food product over time), thereby improving cooking safety and cooking efficiency and enabling the food product to be better cooked to a desired "doneness" degree.

In one embodiment of the present application, the color measurement unit is an image recognition system or a color sensor fixed to the object accommodating unit. It will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that the color measuring unit may be any type of measuring unit capable of measuring a color change of the food product. Further, in the alternative, the color measuring unit may be separated from the object accommodating unit.

In one embodiment of the present application, the color measurement unit is configured to take a picture of the food product, obtain RGB data by analyzing the taken picture, and convert the RGB data into CIE-L a b coordinates.

Since the RGB color model is device dependent, there is no simple formula for the conversion between RGB values and la b. The RGB values first have to be converted to a specific absolute color space, e.g., sRGB or Adobe RGB. This adjustment is device dependent, but the transformed data is device independent, allowing the data to be transformed to the CIE1931 color space and then to L a b.

In this way, parameters related to the color change or browning level, such as red-green change (a) or hue (h), can be determined. Knowing the food type and color change, the processing unit may then be configured to determine food sugar content information.

Alternatively, the color measurement unit is configured to take a picture of the food item and obtain RGB values or CMYK values by analyzing the taken picture.

In this way, parameters related to color change or browning level, such as R-value, can be determined. Knowing the food type and color change, the processing unit may then be configured to determine food sugar content information.

In an embodiment of the application, the device may further comprise a recipe guiding unit for displaying a recipe menu comprising a list of food types to the user for selection by the user. This allows the user to conveniently select a food type from the list of entries. In this way, the input unit may be configured to receive the food type from the recipe guiding unit.

In an embodiment of the application, the processing unit is further configured to store correlation information between the sugar content information and the measured color change for a specific food type. The correlation information may be, for example, empirical data obtained from experiments. As an example, multiple samples (or instances) of a particular food type for which sugar content information is known may be heated while measuring the color change. The color change of these different samples with different sugar content information can then be determined and, for example, the sugar content information as a function of color plotted (or tabulated as color-varying sugar content information). The sugar content information of the food product can then be determined by cross-correlating with graphical (or tabular) information. Here, as will be understood by those skilled in the art, the drawing or tabulation of data is merely used to indicate that data is available to specify dependencies, where dependencies may be implemented within a processing unit without, for example, a physical diagram.

In one embodiment of the present application, the apparatus further may comprise a shaking unit for shaking the food item. This is particularly useful for making the color change of the food more uniform. For example, during cooking, the rocking unit operates at weight loss of 25% and 40%, respectively.

In one embodiment of the present application, the apparatus is configured to heat or subject the food product to convective air flow; or the device or its object-containing unit is configured to heat the food product by convection-assisted heating. In this way, the color change of the food product will be more uniform than those cooked by other cooking methods. This may provide more accurate results for the determination of sugar content.

Furthermore, free water on the surface of the food product can evaporate more easily. Thus, for a given amount (e.g. 30g) of food, a significant weight change (e.g. 2-3g) can be observed earlier. This may reduce the requirements on the sensors used. At the same time, the time required for determining the sugar content information can be shortened and the temperature required can be lowered.

According to a second aspect, there is provided a heating appliance for cooking a food product comprising an apparatus for determining sugar content information according to the first aspect described above and optionally one or more of any of the embodiments described above.

In one embodiment of the present application, the heating appliance is an air fryer or oven.

In this way, when the air fryer or oven forms part of the intelligent cooking device, a separate sensor for monitoring sugar content, such as a near infrared (i.e., NIR) sensor, is not required.

In addition, the air fryer or oven may control the air speed, and/or control the air temperature, and/or control the humidity of the air entering the air fryer or oven, thereby enabling more accurate determination of the sugar content information of the food product.

According to a third aspect, a method for determining information on the sugar content of a food product during or after cooking is provided. The method includes containing a food product; receiving a food type of the food item; measuring a color change of the food product during or after cooking; and determining sugar content information of the food product based on the food type and the measured color change.

In one embodiment of the present application, the method further comprises measuring the weight of the food item as a function of time.

In one embodiment of the present application, the method further comprises determining the cooking endpoint based on at least a weight loss rate of the food product, the weight loss rate of the food product being dependent on a change in weight of the food product over time. According to another aspect, a computer program element of controlling an apparatus or a heating appliance as described above is provided, which, when being executed by a processing unit, is adapted to carry out the method steps as described above.

According to another aspect, a computer-readable medium is provided storing the computer element as described above.

Advantageously, the benefits provided by any of the aspects described above apply equally to all other aspects, and vice versa.

The aspects and examples described above will become apparent from and elucidated with reference to the embodiments described hereinafter.

Drawings

Exemplary embodiments will be described below with reference to the following drawings:

1-4 show schematic arrangements of an apparatus for determining sugar content information of a food product during or after cooking according to various embodiments of the present application;

FIG. 5 illustrates a method for determining food product sugar content information during or after cooking according to one embodiment of the present application; and is

Fig. 6a and 6b show fitted curves for different sugar content information according to examples of the present application.

Detailed Description

Fig. 1 shows an example of an apparatus 100 for determining sugar content information of a food product during or after cooking according to an embodiment of the present application. The apparatus 100 includes an object accommodating unit 20, an input unit 30, a color measuring unit 40, and a processing unit 50. The object accommodating unit 20 is configured to accommodate food. The input unit 30 is configured to receive a food type of the food item. The color measurement unit 40 is configured to measure a color change of the food item during or after cooking. The processing unit 50 is configured to subsequently determine sugar content information for the food product based on the food type and the measured color change.

In this way, the apparatus 100 enables determination of sugar content information for a particular food type from a color change measured during or after cooking. With this apparatus 100, a user can easily and conveniently obtain sugar content information without the need for chemical analysis or any other effort. The determined sugar content information can be used to track a person's daily intake to help the person maintain a balanced diet. This is particularly useful in situations where the nutritional content of the food product is not available.

In one example, the object containing unit 20 is configured to be heated. In this way, the food product can be heated and browned due to Maillard reactions and caramelization. In one example, the object accommodating unit 20 is configured to be maintained at a stable temperature for a period of time during which a color change of the food is measured. In one example, the object containing unit 20 is configured to be heated so as to increase the temperature within the object containing unit 20 and then maintained at a stable temperature, and wherein the color change of the food item is measured during a period of time in which the object containing unit 20 is subjected to a temperature increase and maintained at a stable temperature. In other words, the food item may be placed in the object accommodating unit 20, and the object accommodating unit 20 is "preheated" to a temperature at which the color change is measured, or the food item may be placed in the object accommodating unit 20, and then the object accommodating unit 20 is heated and then maintained at a stable temperature while measuring the color change. In one example, the object accommodating unit 20 is not maintained at a stable temperature, but is simply heated and a color change is measured.

In one example, the user interacts with the input unit 30 to indicate a food type, such as that the input food type is, for example, a potato chip, fish or meat, or more specifically pork or steak or chicken or mutton or salmon or cod, or a specific vegetable type, or a specific product type, such as a meat ball or hamburger or sausage, or more specifically a beef ball, turkey ball, beef hamburger, pork sausage, or a specific cut piece, such as chicken leg, chicken breast, "whole chicken", rib eye steak, steak. In other words, in one example, the input unit 30 is configured to receive the food type by the user inputting the food type in the input unit.

The term "food type" refers herein to any type of food for which sugar content information can be determined from color changes. Here, the food type may refer to a general food category such as cauliflower, chicken, carrot, fish (and may refer to a specific type of fish such as salmon, cod), or potato, or a food such as potato chips or potato chips. Food type may also refer to food products from different cultivars or subjected to different pre-treatments. Thus, one skilled in the art will appreciate that the food type may include a variety of foods, such as potatoes, and may further include a particular cultivar, such as sheppody.

In one example, the input unit 30 automatically receives the food type, for example, through a camera that acquires an image of the food item and image processing that determines the food type of the food item and passes this information to the input unit 30.

In one example, the color measuring unit 40 is configured to measure a color change of the food item when the food item is put into the object accommodating unit 20 having a stable temperature for a period of time during cooking. In one example, the color measuring unit 40 is configured to measure a color change of the food product after cooking, for example, when the temperature of the object accommodating unit 20 for accommodating the food product starts to drop.

The term "color change" as used herein refers to any color change that can be used to predict sugar content information. For example, a color change may refer to a red-green change (a) or hue (h) in the CIE-L a b coordinate system.

In one example, the color measurement unit 40 is configured to take a picture of the food product, obtain RGB data by analyzing the taken picture, and convert the RGB data into CIE-L a b coordinates. Since the RGB color model is device dependent, there is no simple formula for the conversion between RGB values and la b. The RGB values first have to be converted to a specific absolute color space, e.g., sRGB or Adobe RGB. This adjustment is device dependent, but the transformed data is device independent, allowing the data to be transformed to the CIE1931 color space and then to L a b. In this way, parameters related to the color change or browning level, such as red-green change (a) or hue (h), can be determined.

Alternatively, the color measurement unit 40 is configured to take a picture of food, and obtain RGB values or CMYK values by analyzing the taken picture. In this way, parameters related to color change or browning level, such as R-value, can be determined.

Based on the information related to the type of food and the color change measurement of the food product, the processing unit 50 may determine sugar content information.

In one example, the processing unit 50 is further configured to store correlation information between sugar content information and measured color changes for a particular food type. The correlation information may be, for example, empirical data obtained from experiments. For example, multiple samples (or instances) of a particular food type for which sugar content information is known may be heated while measuring the color change. As another example, sugar content information for a particular food type may be obtained by chemical analysis. The color change of these different samples with different sugar content information can then be determined and, for example, the sugar content information as a function of color plotted (or tabulated as color-varying sugar content information). The sugar content information of the food product can then be determined by cross-correlating with graphical (or tabular) information. Here, as will be understood by those skilled in the art, the drawing or tabulation of data is merely used to indicate that data is available to specify dependencies, where dependencies may be implemented within the processing unit 50 without, for example, a physical diagram.

In one example, the temperature within the object containing unit 20 is substantially constant during the measurement of the color change of the food product.

As can be seen from fig. 1, the color measuring unit 40 is separated from the object accommodating unit 20. However, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that the color measurement unit 40 may be an integral part of the object accommodating unit 20.

As shown in fig. 2, an apparatus 200 for determining sugar content information of a food product during or after cooking in accordance with another embodiment of the present application is depicted. Similar to fig. 1, the apparatus 200 includes an object accommodating unit 20, an input unit 30, a color measuring unit 40, and a processing unit 50. The object accommodating unit 20 is configured to accommodate food. The input unit 30 is configured to receive a food type of the food item. The color measurement unit 40 is configured to measure a color change of the food item during or after cooking. The processing unit 50 is configured to subsequently determine sugar content information of the food product based on the type of food and the measured color change. However, unlike fig. 1, the color measuring unit 40 is integrally formed in the object accommodating unit 20. In one example, the color measuring unit 40 is an image recognition system or a color sensor fixed to the object accommodating unit 20. It will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that the color measurement unit 40 may be any type of measurement unit capable of measuring a color change of the food product.

In this manner, the apparatus 200 enables determination of sugar content information for a particular food type from a color change measured during or after cooking. With this apparatus 200, a user can easily and conveniently obtain sugar content information without the need for chemical analysis or any other effort. The determined sugar content information can be used to track a person's daily intake to help the person maintain a balanced diet. This is particularly useful if no nutritional ingredients of the food are available.

In one embodiment of the present application, as shown in FIG. 3, an apparatus 300 for determining sugar content information of a food product during or after cooking is shown. In contrast to the apparatus 200 shown in fig. 2, the apparatus 300 further includes a weight sensor 60, and the weight sensor 60 is configured to measure the weight of the food items in the object accommodating unit 20 over time.

In one example, the weight sensor 60 is used to calculate the amount of sugar (g) based on the determined sugar content (%) of a particular food product and the measured weight of the food product. In one example, the load cell 60 is also used to indicate a change in weight, and from the sensed weight change and the type of food input by the user, a size factor (or surface to volume ratio) can be calculated. The determined size factor may then be used to determine appropriate cooking parameters, such as cooking temperature or temperature profile, and/or cooking duration.

In one example, the measured weight of the food product is converted to a relative weight, e.g., to yield a percentage weight loss over time. In other words, the starting weight is measured and the subsequent weight is divided by the starting weight to determine the relative weight. In this manner, the processing unit 50 may be configured to determine the end of cooking based at least on the weight loss percentage of the food product (depending on the weight change of the food product over time), thereby improving cooking safety and cooking efficiency, and enabling the food product to be better cooked to a desired degree of "doneness".

It should be noted that potential non-evaporative weight changes due to, for example, dripping and spilling of water, melting of fat, or flow of oil, will result in errors. It is expected that the weight measured over time is due primarily to water evaporation. In other words, there may be dripping or spilling of water, as well as melting of fat and flowing of oil, but it is expected that these will not cause weight change. By measuring the weight of the object accommodating unit, it is advantageous to measure the weight change due to water evaporation. This is because the potentially non-evaporative weight change does not affect the weight measurement because water and fat can be accommodated within the object accommodating unit, and such dripping, overflowing, and melting of fat of water does not cause a weight change within the object accommodating unit.

Turning to fig. 4, there is shown a schematic arrangement of an apparatus 400 for determining sugar content information of a food product during or after cooking. Compared to the apparatus 300 shown in fig. 3, the apparatus 400 further comprises a recipe guiding unit 70 and a shaking unit 80. The recipe guiding unit 70 is adapted to be communicatively coupled with the input unit 30 and configured to display a recipe menu comprising a list of food types to the user for selection. In this way, the input unit 30 may receive the food type from the recipe guiding unit 70, thereby allowing the user to select the food type from the list of entries. In fig. 4, a shaking unit 80 is shown in the object accommodating unit 20 and is used to shake the food, which is particularly useful for making the color change of the food more uniform. However, it may be understood by those skilled in the art that the shaking unit 80 may be placed at any suitable position to shake the food item, and is not limited to being placed in the object accommodating unit 20.

In various embodiments of the present application, the apparatus for determining sugar content information may operate with air/oil convection (natural and forced) assisted heating, as the color change is relatively fast and noticeable for these cooking methods. In particular, the color change of the food product is more uniform in convection-assisted heating than in other cooking methods, thereby helping to obtain more accurate sugar content determination results.

According to one embodiment of the present application, the above-described

apparatuses

100, 200, 300, and 400 may be considered to be included in a heating appliance for cooking food. In one example, the heating appliance is an air fryer or oven.

Fig. 5 illustrates a method for determining food product sugar content information during or after cooking according to one embodiment of the present application. The method comprises the following steps:

in the housing step S100, food is housed.

In the receiving step S200, the food type of the food item is received.

In the measuring step S300, the color change of the food during or after cooking is measured.

In a determination step S400, sugar content information of the food product is determined based on the type of food and the measured color change.

Further, the method may include a measuring step S320 in which the weight of the food is measured according to time. Further, the method may include a determining step S420 in which an end point of cooking is determined based on at least a weight loss rate of the food item. One example of obtaining correlation information between sugar content information and color change for a food type will now be described in more detail.

For homemade potato strips, the sugar content of the potato tubers varies from cultivar to cultivar, storage time, and pretreatment. Glucose and fructose are the major monosaccharides in potato tubers, at concentrations of 0.15-1.5%. Sucrose (0.4-6.6%) is a non-reducing disaccharide. In order to establish a data set of empirical correlation information between sugar content information and color change for various food types, experiments were conducted with potatoes of different cultivars (City shop, sheppody potatoes). Potatoes were peeled and cut into rectangular potato strips (about 1cm by 7 cm). Then different pretreatments were carried out as follows: 1: soaking in water at room temperature for 30 minutes, 2: bleaching in a 60 ℃ water bath for 30 minutes, 3: sonication for 30 minutes, 4: steaming at low temperature (60 ℃) for 30 minutes. Prior to heating, the french fries (about 400g) were patted dry with a paper towel and mixed with about 4.68g of oil. The potato strips are then placed in an air fryer XL (180 ℃) and all potato strips are fried to the same doneness level (60% weight loss). During cooking, when weight loss reaches 25% and 40%, the french fries are shaken to make the color and texture more uniform.

The load cell is disposed under the object accommodating unit or the entire apparatus, and measures moisture loss due to evaporation during cooking and determines a cooking end point. During or after cooking, pictures of the home-made french fries were taken under the same lighting conditions. The sugar content of different cultivars or different pretreated potato strips was detected by chemical means.

The browning grades of the two home-made chips are different. The sugar content of the City shop potato pretreated by water bath at 60 ℃ is 0.37 percent, and the sugar content of the Shepody potato pretreated by soaking in room-temperature water is 0.02 percent. It is expected that the higher the sugar content, the deeper the browning.

For color analysis, these taken pictures are analyzed by image software to obtain RGB data. And for each picture the average of three measurements for different areas is used. The RGB data were then converted to CIE-L a b coordinates. The CIE-L a b coordinate system consists of: brightness (L), red-green change (a), yellow-blue change (b).

Further, the hue (h) can be obtained by the following equation: h ═ arctg (a ═ b ═ left)

It is understood that the values of the coordinates a and h are related to browning. By statistical investigations, as shown in fig. 6a and 6b, the sugar content of different cultivars or differently pretreated home-made potato strips was obtained. It can be seen that the sugar content is related to the value of the coordinates a and the corresponding value of h. The correlation between sugar content and color change (e.g. red-green change a and hue h) is relatively high, with a variance greater than 0.95. Therefore, the sugar content (%) can be predicted with high accuracy.

In the above manner, any integrated unit or separate sensing unit of a heating appliance (e.g. cooker) may derive sugar content information of the cooked item using the color change obtained during or after cooking. Thus, the user can easily and conveniently obtain sugar content information without the need for chemical analysis or any other effort. The determined sugar content information can be used to track a person's daily intake to help the person maintain a balanced diet. This is particularly useful if no nutritional ingredients of the food are available.

In another exemplary embodiment, a computer program or a computer program element is provided, characterized in that it is configured to perform the method steps according to one of the preceding embodiments on a suitable system.

The computer program element may thus be stored on a computer unit, which may also be part of an embodiment. The computing unit may be configured to perform or cause to be performed the steps of the above-described method. Further, it may also be configured to operate the components of the apparatus and/or oven described above. The computing unit may be configured to operate automatically and/or execute commands of a user. The computer program may be loaded into a working memory of a data processor. The data processor may thus be equipped to carry out a method according to one of the preceding embodiments.

This exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure covers a computer program that uses the present disclosure from the beginning, and a computer program that changes an existing program into a program using the present disclosure by updating.

Furthermore, the computer program element may be a program capable of providing all the necessary steps to implement the exemplary embodiments of the method described above.

According to another exemplary embodiment of the disclosure, a computer-readable medium, for example a CD-ROM, is proposed, wherein the computer-readable medium has stored thereon a computer program element as described in the preceding section. A computer program may be stored and/or distributed on a suitable medium, such as an optical storage medium or a solid-state medium supplied together with or as part of other hardware, but may also be distributed in other forms, such as via a network or other wired or wireless telecommunication systems.

However, the computer program may also be presented via a network, such as the world wide web, and may be downloaded into the working memory of a data processor from such a network. According to another exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure, a medium for making a computer program element available for downloading is provided, the computer program element being arranged to perform a method according to one of the aforementioned embodiments of the present disclosure.

It is noted that embodiments of the present disclosure have been described in connection with different subject matters. In particular, some embodiments are described in conjunction with method class claims while others are described in conjunction with apparatus class claims. However, a person skilled in the art will gather from the above and the following description that, unless other notified, in addition to any combination of features belonging to one type of subject-matter also any combination between features relating to different subject-matters is considered to be disclosed with this application.

However, all features may be combined if the synergy effect is better than a simple superposition of the features.

While the disclosure has been illustrated and described in detail in the drawings and foregoing description, such illustration and description are to be considered illustrative or exemplary and not restrictive. The present disclosure is not limited to the disclosed embodiments. Other variations to the disclosed embodiments can be understood and effected by those skilled in the art in practicing the claimed invention, from a study of the drawings, the disclosure, and the appended claims.

In the claims, the word "comprising" does not exclude other elements or steps, and the indefinite article "a" or "an" does not exclude a plurality. A single processor or other unit may fulfill the functions of several items recited in the claims. The mere fact that certain measures are recited in mutually different dependent claims does not indicate that a combination of these measures cannot be used to advantage.

Any reference signs in the claims shall not be construed as limiting the scope.

Claims

1. An apparatus for determining sugar content information for a food product, for determining sugar content information for the food product during or after cooking, comprising:

an object accommodating unit (20) for accommodating the food;

an input unit (30) for receiving a food type of the food item;

a color measuring unit (40) for measuring a color change of the food product during or after cooking; and

a processing unit (50) configured to determine sugar content information for the food product based on the food type and the measured color change.

2. The apparatus of claim 1, further comprising a weight sensor (60) configured to measure a weight of the food product in the object containing unit over time.

3. The apparatus according to claim 2, wherein the processing unit (50) is further configured to determine an end point of cooking based at least on a weight loss rate of the food product, the weight loss rate depending on a weight change of the food product over time.

4. The apparatus according to any of claims 1-3, characterized in that the color measurement unit (40) is an image recognition system or a color sensor fixed to the object containing unit (20).

5. The device according to any one of claims 1-3, wherein the color measurement unit (40) is configured to take a picture of the food product, obtain RGB data by analyzing the taken picture, and convert the RGB data to CIE-L a b coordinates.

6. The apparatus according to any of the claims 1-3, further comprising a recipe guiding unit (70) for displaying a recipe menu comprising a list of the food types to a user for selection, wherein the input unit (30) is configured to receive the food types from the recipe guiding unit (70).

7. The apparatus according to any of claims 1-3, wherein the processing unit (50) is further configured to store correlation information between the sugar content information and the measured color change for a specific food type.

8. The apparatus according to any of claims 1-3, further comprising a shaking unit (80) for shaking the food product to even out the color change.

9. The apparatus according to any of claims 1-3, characterized in that the apparatus (100, 200, 300, 400) is configured to heat or subject the food product to convection of air; or wherein the device (100, 200, 300, 400) or its object containing unit (20) is configured to heat the food product by convection assisted heating.

10. Heating appliance for cooking food products, characterized in that it comprises a device for determining sugar content information of food products according to any one of claims 1 to 9.

11. The heating appliance of claim 10, wherein the heating appliance is an air fryer or an oven.