Full disclosure: I am genetically predisposed to be skinny, yet am struggling to get rid of a potbelly because I cannot stop drinking beer and eating Oreos. We live in a crazy world, where an impoverished chunk of the population cannot get enough calories, and another chunk takes in so many calories that they are preoccupied with weight loss for the sake of health or vanity.

That is the reality. To paraphrase the old Chris Rock joke, there are millions of people on this planet for whom the ability to get fat would be amazing. It would astonish someone from a starving nation to see one of us relatively rich Westerners at an all-you-can-eat buffet. And it would amaze them even more to see the Lumen, a new technology-driven tool from a startup of the same name. The company worked with a team from frog to develop the product and user experience, launching their crowd funding campaign last month. 

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Lumen is a small technology-packed item that you breathe into. The device then analyzes your breath to tell you whether you're burning carbohydrates or burning fat. Here's how they envision the device being used:

What Lumen can do is an amazing technological feat, and one that previously could only be done in a lab. That the developers have created a portable device that one can use to instantly measure their metabolic fuel usage is pretty jaw-dropping. Beyond measuring your metabolism, the supporting app helps users to personalize their nutrition plans and provides pre/post workout recommendations to help reach long term health goals.  

Demand for Lumen is high, judging by the fact that it was 3,511% funded last week on IndieGogo, with $1,764,302 in pledges. And those who struggle with weight loss are sure to find the $249 device useful. It's just sobering to think about what someone from a developing nation would make of this--we have so much to consume, that we must create technological devices to tell us when we are taking in too much of it.