Are fitness trackers, the increasingly popular devices championed by employers to help workers develop healthier lifestyles, as all-knowing as they are made out to be?
Researchers who recently compared the devices to traditional methods of counting calories say they are not impressed. The two old school methods had people consume a liquid that allows analysis of calorie expenditure via urine and, of course, shutting them in an airtight chamber and monitoring every calorie consumed and burned.
In two experiments, the 12 gadgets, including the Fitbit Flex and JawBone Up24, did not appear to accurately track the number of calories consumed and burned. In some cases they dramatically underestimated the number of calories burnt, and in other cases, they overestimated.
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Obviously, people aren't going to be happy knowing that these expensive devices bought to offer deeper insight into how their bodies work might have been dispensing incorrect data. Besides the sting of owning a wearable incapable of gathering accurate fitness information, these devices pose a particularly great risk for those that link exercise to serious conditions.
"For example, it could be quite dangerous if someone with heart disease had inaccurate recordings of their activity and exercise that was being used to make medical decisions," Dr. Adam Schoenfeld of the University of California San Francisco, who was involved in the study, told Reuters.
Wellness companies have increasingly promoted fitness devices as a way to get employees engaged in their health. Some companies offer incentives to workers who take a certain number of steps a day, for instance. Tracking movement, however, is likely more straightforward and less prone to fault than calculating the number of calories consumed and burned.
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