Patent Application
20080086373
For a more complete understanding of the present disclosure and the advantages thereof, reference is now made to the following brief description, taken in connection with the accompanying drawings and detailed description, wherein like reference numerals represent like parts.
In an embodiment shown in
While
Consumer 12 can add a loyalty card 14 to the loyalty profile 24 (Block 32). In the example shown in
When consumer 12 purchases products from store 18 using loyalty card 14 linked to loyalty profile 24, informational computer 20 automatically updates loyalty profile 24 with purchases made with loyalty card 14 (Block 34). Consumer 12 can access informational computer 20 and request information about the products purchased through network 16 (Block 36). The consumer 12 can also receive information regarding the products purchased with loyalty card 14 (Block 38). The information received by consumer 12 may include, but is not limited to, information regarding nutritional information of products purchased, alternatives to products purchased, methods of preparation of products purchased, and other promotional or informational material. The information that consumer 12 receives may be transmitted via email, displayed on a local web browser, transmitted through telephonic communication (e.g., facsimile transmission), presented at a point of sale or purchase, or in other ways known to one skilled in the art.
Sales log 62 shows that consumer 12 purchased two units 68 of bread 64 and four units 70 of candy 66. Sales log 62 may also include other information, such as the date of purchase, the method of payment, and identifying the loyalty card used during the transaction in which sales log 62 was created. Sales log 62 may identify products sold in any number of different ways, including, but not limited to, recording the UPC of each item, a serial number for each item, or in any number of ways known to one skilled in the art. Sales log 62 may be created through any method known to one skilled in the art, including, but not limited to, recording items scanned at the point of sale, and listing these items in sales log 62.
Consumer profile 24 indicates that consumer 12 is interested in tracking carbohydrates 72 and saturated fat 74. It is contemplated that loyalty profile 24 contains records of all sales, including those recorded by sales log 62, where loyalty card 14 was used to make a purchase as well as any other information entered into customer profile 24 by consumer 12. While two elements, carbohydrates 72 and saturated fat 74 are shown, it is understood that any number of elements may be designated by the consumer, a predestinated set of elements may be selected by store 18 or consumer 12, or that all available entries in nutritional database 22 may be used. It is further contemplated that settings 76 include, but are not limited to, information regarding nutritional information of products purchased, methods of preparation of products purchased, and possible alternatives to products purchased. For exemplary purposes only, it will be assumed that loyalty profile information contains information relating to two individuals in this illustrative example.
In this embodiment, nutritional database 22 contains information about the following products: bread 64, candy 66, and juice 67. For each of these products, nutritional database 22 contains information about the elements carbohydrates 72, protein 154, total fat 156, saturated fat 74, cholesterol 160, sodium 162 and vitamin C 164. For the purpose of clarity, the term products is intended to refer to any item which is sold and may appear in sales log 62, and the term element is to refer a property of a product. Nutritional database 22 is intended to be illustrative only, as it is contemplated that any number of products may be present within the database, and any number of elements may describe the products.
Informational computer 20 aggregates information from sales log 62 and loyalty profile 24 to create preliminary report 114. Preliminary report 114 contains information about carbohydrates total 80 and saturated fat total 82. In this example, there are a total of four units 80 of carbohydrates 72, and sixteen units 82 of saturated fats 74. It is understood that preliminary report 114 may also contain information regarding the number of individuals, activity levels, or other items listed in loyalty profile 24, as well as the time period in which it is expected that the products purchased in sales log 62 will be consumed. This preliminary report may also take into consideration other items, including, but not limited to, the number of meals that an individual in loyalty profile 24 is scheduled to eat, and pass this information to usage database 112.
Usage database 112 may contain information including, but not limited to, the recommended daily allowance of elements, information about certain foods, and other information which may be available. The usage database 112 may be populated from the USDA, FDA, or other sources of information. It is contemplated that usage database 112 may also contain additional information about foods, such as possible health warnings.
Tabulation unit 84 uses information from preliminary report 114 and usage database 112 to create report 86. Tabulation unit 84 is also capable of adding other additional information including, but not limited to, promotional information, methods of preparation of products purchased, alternatives to products purchased, as well other forms of information. Tabulation unit 84 may also perform other functions, such as examining all products purchased as reflected by loyalty profile 24, matching those products against usage database 112, and adding possible nutrient deficiencies to report 86. For instance, if the FDA recommends a particular amount of vitamin C, and none is found within loyalty profile 24, it could alert consumer 12 to the deficiency. In addition, if consumer 12 had an unsafe amount of sodium 162, tabulation unit 84 could pass a message listed in the FDA into report 86. It is contemplated that other sources of information, including, but not limited to, the American Medical Association could be made part of usage database 112.
Report 86 shows the results of the information gathered by tabulation unit 84. Since consumer 12, in this embodiment, has indicated a desire to track usage of carbohydrates 72 and saturated fat 74, report 86 will list these items. As previously indicated, loyalty profile 24 has shown that there are two individuals who are using loyalty profile 24. The generated report shows that there are four units 80 of total carbohydrates 88, two units 94 of which are consumed per person 92, and the USDA recommended daily allowance 96 is two units 98. The generated report also shows that there are sixteen units 82 of saturated fat 74, eight units 106 of which are consumed per person 104, and the USDA recommended daily allowance 108 is two units 110. One of the advantages of the disclosed innovations is the ability to tabulate sales log 62 into the loyalty profile 24, compare this information with third party recommendations, and providing consumer 12 with nutritional information. Tabulation unit 84 is further capable of performing comparative analysis. Comparative analysis is intended to include, but not be limited to, the process by which tabulation unit 84 compares the amount of each element purchased divided by a factor, such as the USDA recommended daily allowance. This provides consumer 12 with a result that illustrates the proportion of items purchased (e.g. a first number of days of a first food element and a second number of days of a second food element.). This comparative analysis may be customized by consumer 12 using loyalty profile 24. This customization includes, but is not limited to, indicating consumption habits using loyalty profile 24. Comparative analysis allows the consumer to determine the relative amount of each element purchased as adjusted by dietary guidelines.
Another innovative feature of the present disclosure is the ability to refresh report 86 and allow consumer 12, loyalty profile 24, or other entity to create alert thresholds. For instance, the consumer 12 may want to be alerted when saturated fat 82 is consumed in an unhealthy amount. Another example of an alert would be if store 18 becomes aware of a problem with an item purchased by consumer 12, a warning may be sent to consumer 12.
Another innovative feature of the present embodiments is the ability for a report to be created over an extended period of time, taking into account changes in diet, age, and activity level. For instance, consumer 12 requirements for carbohydrates 72 can change as activity level, age, and diet changes. This embodiment, by using the aforementioned method of calculating percentages, may create a report wherein the consumer is able to see a long term carbohydrates 72, or any other item, intake trend while taking into account these changing factors. Consumer 12 can customize a report to be generated over any period of time, taking into account any number of factors part of loyalty profile 24.
The informational computer 20 described above may be implemented on any general-purpose computer 190 with sufficient processing power, memory resources, and network throughput capability to handle the necessary workload placed upon it. A user home personal computer, networked to a central informational computer 20 through a wide area network, such as the Internet, may be used in conjunction with the disclosed embodiments. The user home personal computer may share some, or all, of the elements of informational computer 20.
The secondary storage 192 is typically comprised of one or more disk drives or tape drives and is used for non-volatile storage of data and as an over-flow data storage device if RAM 196 is not large enough to hold all working data. Secondary storage 192 may be used to store programs which are loaded into RAM 196 when such programs are selected for execution. The ROM 194 is used to store instructions and perhaps data which are read during program execution. ROM 194 is a non-volatile memory device which typically has a small memory capacity relative to the larger memory capacity of secondary storage. The RAM 196 is used to store volatile data and perhaps to store instructions. Access to both ROM 194 and RAM 196 is typically faster than to secondary storage 192.
I/O 198 devices may include printers, video monitors, liquid crystal displays (LCDs), touch screen displays, keyboards, keypads, switches, dials, mice, track balls, voice recognizers, card readers, paper tape readers, or other well-known input devices. The network connectivity devices 392 may take the form of modems, modem banks, ethernet cards, universal serial bus (USB) interface cards, serial interfaces, token ring cards, fiber distributed data interface (FDDI) cards, wireless local area network (WLAN) cards, radio transceiver cards such as code division multiple access (CDMA) and/or global system for mobile communications (GSM) radio transceiver cards, and other well-known network devices. These network connectivity 200 devices may enable the processor 202 to communicate with an Internet or one or more intranets. With such a network connection, it is contemplated that the processor 202 might receive information from the network, or might output information to the network in the course of performing the above-described method steps. Such information, which is often represented as a sequence of instructions to be executed using processor 202, may be received from and outputted to the network, for example, in the form of a computer data signal embodied in a carrier wave.
Such information, which may include data or instructions to be executed using processor 202 for example, may be received from and outputted to the network, for example, in the form of a computer data baseband signal or signal embodied in a carrier wave. The baseband signal or signal embodied in the carrier wave generated by the network connectivity devices 200 may propagate in or on the surface of electrical conductors, in coaxial cables, in waveguides, in optical media, for example optical fiber, or in the air or free space. The information contained in the baseband signal or signal embedded in the carrier wave may be ordered according to different sequences, as may be desirable for either processing or generating the information or transmitting or receiving the information. The baseband signal or signal embedded in the carrier wave, or other types of signals currently used or hereafter developed, referred to herein as the transmission medium, may be generated according to several methods well known to one skilled in the art.
The processor 202 executes instructions, codes, computer programs, scripts which it accesses from hard disk, floppy disk, optical disk (these various disk based systems may all be considered secondary storage 192), ROM 194, RAM 196, or the network connectivity devices 200.
While several embodiments have been provided in the present disclosure, it should be understood that the disclosed systems and methods may be embodied in many other specific forms without departing from the spirit or scope of the present disclosure. The present examples are to be considered as illustrative and not restrictive, and the intention is not to be limited to the details given herein. For example, the various elements or components may be combined or integrated in another system or certain features may be omitted, or not implemented.
Also, techniques, systems, subsystems and methods described and illustrated in the various embodiments as discrete or separate may be combined or integrated with other systems, modules, techniques, or methods without departing from the scope of the present disclosure. Other products shown or discussed as directly coupled or communicating with each other may be coupled through some interface or device, such that the products may no longer be considered directly coupled to each other but may still be indirectly coupled and in communication, whether electrically, mechanically, or otherwise with one another. Other examples of changes, substitutions, and alterations are ascertainable by one skilled in the art and could be made without departing from the spirit and scope disclosed herein.
It should be understood that although an exemplary implementation of one embodiment of the present disclosure is illustrated above, the present system may be implemented using any number of techniques, whether currently known or in existence. The present disclosure should in no way be limited to the exemplary implementations, drawings, and techniques illustrated above, including the exemplary design and implementation illustrated and described herein, but may be modified within the scope of the appended claims along with their full scope of equivalents.
This application claims priority under 35 U.S.C. §119(e) to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 60/828,495 entitled “Nutrition Management and Meal Planning Program”, filed on Oct. 6, 2006, which is incorporated herein by reference for all purposes.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 60828495 | Oct 2006 | US |
