It's that time again.
People around the world are dusting off treadmills, pinning healthy recipes on Pinterest, and trying new diets.
And in London, one startup is looking to tailor fitness routines to your most personal information—DNA.
DnaNudge uses a miniaturized DNA test to determine possible health risks based on genetic makeup.
Through a mail-order kit or in its physical shop, the company takes a sample of your DNA by swabbing your cheeks and tests it against genetic markers of four conditions: diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, and obesity.
In a companion app, DnaNudge breaks down how your body is affected by salt, saturated fat, caffeine, and so on.
That data is transferred to the £120 DnaBand, a small wearable with a low-power, built-in camera, which sits on your wrist and can scan barcodes.
Nutritional information for food in the United Kingdom is in the public domain, so the DnaBand analyzes it, compares it to your DNA, and flashes red if the food is a bad choice and green if it's a healthier one.
The company isn't aiming for you to drop caffeine and salty sweets immediately, but it could, for example, encourage you to switch between a chocolate bar that's higher in sugar to one that's slightly lower.
You might balk at the idea of handing over your DNA to a startup, especially when other companies have shared genetic data with the government without informing customers.
DnaNudge is keen to stress that your DNA information is not retained.
Samples are destroyed as soon as the initial test is complete.
A shop in London's Covent Garden—with its colorful interior, pop-art promo images, and cartoon video explanations—also try to alleviate any concerns about shadowy practices.
Still, anonymized data is shared for "research and...commercial purposes," according to DnaNudge's terms and conditions.
For example, DnaNudge could provide a breakdown of the products scanned by users to retailers, which they could use to better analyze shopping habits in a manner similar to a loyalty card.
Should the worst occur and your data is hacked, the most a malicious individual could get compared to any other company is your disposition toward sugar or salt, according to the company's co-founder, Chris Toumazou, and even then your identity would remain anonymous.
Forming an Emotional Attachment
As a product, the DnaBand is attempting to cause a psychological change rather than a biological one.
Everything, from the physicality of a wearable device—which can be a tough sell in the crowded marketplace of Apple Watches, Fitbits, and other health trackers—to the movement of scanning a barcode, is designed around small changes to your day-to-day shopping habits rather seismic lifestyle shifts.
"To me [the band] is an emotional attachment," Toumazou says.
"It's not one of these heart rate monitors with a paraphernalia of activity." Minor adjustments in what you eat, encouraged by the novelty of using a band, could make a substantial difference, he says.
A band also breaks the company from the drudgery of being another service on the smartphone, an ecosystem where the average number of app downloads per month is zero, although the companion app can achieve the same tasks.
While it might be difficult making people scan all their shopping items, Toumazou is adamant that it's simpler than it seems since the act of scanning is a one-time thing.
With the Band's data synced with the smartphone, showing a list of what they've scanned and potential healthier alternatives, that information is already in their head.
"Once [people are] educated, they don't need to scan everything.
But once you've got that education, then it's just a quick binary choice between healthy and unhealthy" Toumazou says.
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The Band was not always set to be the Band, however, and DnaNudge went through numerous iterations of how it wanted its product to look; one was similar to a coffee maker.
"We wanted it to be packaged in a way that the consumers would think of it almost as a piece of furniture" Toumazou tells me, but it eventually moved to "a brick on the wrist."
Although a health band became the consumer face of the company, it is not the company's ultimate aim.
DnaNudge is about "building an ecosystem," and the company sees its technology being used in the beauty, healthcare, and pet care industries.
Customers could be tested for irritants when buying makeup, for example, or dogs could have their DNA examined to better avoid health risks.
With DnaNudge's roots in your DNA data, it doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to imagine this technology in the hands of Big Tech.
Google, for example, has already been criticized in the UK for its integration of Deepmind, Google Health, and the Streams application.
Once a technology has been invented, it is much easier to be replicated, after all.
For now, DnaNudge has the intellectual property rights around any wearable technology—and that includes a mobile phone—that can scan barcodes or images and uses molecular biological and lifestyle information.
While there is a future where companies take this data and sell it to supermarkets or, more troublingly, insurance companies, it will come later rather than sooner.
While DnaNudge is only available in the UK for now, Toumazou plans to expand it to Los Angeles and has been talking to Softbank about greater investment.
There is still progress to be made, though.
DnaNudge does not have food data from every retailer yet, and although it's made deals with giants like Walmart, customers may find themselves disappointed spending £120 on a wearable that isn't compatible with their local supermarket.
Whether or not the company takes off and fits with the LA lifestyle remains to be seen but, it's clear the hyper-personalized product recommendations of sci-fi fantasy are closer than you might expect.
