LEDE: Developing healthy eating habits could get much easier with a new technology that tracks your chewing.

Randy Atkins: Understanding when and why people eat has been a challenge for eating disorder researchers.   

David Kotz: If they can better understand those things, they can develop better ways to help people who need to and want to change.

Randy Atkins: David Kotz, a computer scientist at Dartmouth College, is working with engineers at Clemson University on a device called Auracle that contains a tiny microphone and fits behind your ear…picking up vibrations from movements that tell if you’re eating.

David Kotz: We collect a lot of examples of eating and not eating, like drinking and coughing and talking…then we train a machine learning algorithm to recognize the difference.

Randy Atkins: Kotz says the device can help you adjust eating patterns and could eventually track the number of calories you eat.  With the National Academy of Engineering, Randy Atkins, WTOP News.

• David Kotz Biography
• Auracle Project Website