The Prep Pad

An innovative "smart food scale" that pairs with an iPad app to show you the exact nutritional content of your meals.

Welcome to The Lempert Report Innovation Series. If you want to get serious about what you're putting in your body, here's an innovative kitchen tool that will really change the way you understand nutrition. It's called The Prep Pad.  This innovative "smart food scale" pairs with an iPad app to show you the exact nutritional content of your meals, including the carbs, fats, protein, and calories.
Let's take a look:
-When you begin you'll be asked to add your personal information, age, weight, goals...and it will then tell you the USDA recommended calorie intake based on the information you provided. You can also customize your daily calorie goals. When you're ready to log a meal, or a snack, place an item on the prep pad. It will then ask you what's on it, type a description "apple" the tablet then searches from a database of 300,000 plus foods to provide a breakdown of its nutrients and calories, fat etc. So my apple? It shows129 calories, 34g of carbs, less than 1g protein and 0 fat.
And if I want to add to my snack. The prep pad will then add and subtract anything I place on it. And you can see your items together and how that stacks up against your daily goals.
If you're using a container, no problem. Hit the container button, and place the item on the pad and it will minus that weight from anything you then add.
For example, soup.
The Prep PAD will ask what it is and for products like this, you can simply scan the bar code - like this. 
And if you're making a meal, the same idea applies- -I made this meal a favorite earlier, here's my pasta sauce, here's my pasta, it's the prep pad measure it and bingo, here's a breakdown of my meal.
When you save meals you can take a picture and even put how many servings you need.

The added innovation here is being able to keep track of meals and ingredients throughout the day, week of month. The app will show you how all this is measuring up against your goals, the exterior ring is your target nutrition breakdown and the interior rings shows you how you're actually doing. If need be you can adjust ingredient sizes to fit your goals.

Founded by Santiago Merea in San Francisco, The Orange Chef Company is focused on connecting people with food and making the kitchen a smart place. Funding for the Prep Pad began on Kickstarter and has since raised $3 million in a seed round led by Google Ventures. The company's first offering? A simple cover for the iPad to stop it from getting greasy or dirty while cooking, an idea Merea thought of to help his wife out when she baked!