You'd think Apple would have come up with it first, but no, it is Dole Food Company, the world's largest producer and marketer of fresh produce, that will reveal the world's first edible, wearable fitness tracker this Sunday, February 22 at the Tokyo Marathon. At this time, the world will meet the Wearable_Banana.
Dole
The Wearable_Banana, as Dole insists, is no regular banana. It is a banana that runners can strap to their wrists and use to monitor their pace and heart rate. The fruit is equipped with GPS, sensors and LED lights. Even more, it can display encouraging messages sent via Twitter by people who want to cheer on the runner.
Since the first (and maybe only) iteration is synced with the Tokyo Marathon, the Wearable_Banana will detect when the runner has completed the race. After crossing the finish line, the concerned banana will remind its wearer to refuel -- with a banana, of course! Yup, runners can eat their fitness tracker once the race is over. (Although, who really wants to eat a banana that's been sweat on for 26.2 miles? It's a strange world we live in.)
To merge technology with fruit, engineers attach the device inside of an open banana peel. Then they stitch the fruit right back up. "The power source is a small battery connected to the wearable banana. Inside the battery there are ultra-compact LEDs and other electronic components," Itaru Kunieda, the spokesperson of Dole Japan, told CNET. The wearable fruit was mysterious enough without any comment, but Kunieda added, "These are the only details about the specs that we can tell you at the moment."
Bananas are among the foods runners consider a very best friend. They contain essential nutrients that are lost during extended periods of exercise, they provide carbohydrates necessary to fuel a runner with energy and they're portable, too. No research has been conducted on whether wearing the banana can help improve athletes' performance.
You can watch Dole's Wearable_Banana promotional video below.
H/T: Daily Dot
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