I hardly ever use my Nima allergen sensor. I’m still glad I bought it.

Prior to the night of August 10, 2017, I harbored an unabashed love for lobster mac and cheese. I realize that undercooked pasta and cheddar sauce are no real place for delicate crustacean meat, but I longed for it anyway—because there’s only one restaurant I know of where I can eat it. Or at least I could, before that evening.

It might seem silly, or perhaps pathetic, to mourn the loss of a food love. I realize that. The reason it’s so crushing is that it was completely avoidable. Months earlier, I had tested a spiffy little device called Nima that would have saved me from a deeply unpleasant evening and preserved my lobster mac obsession, and that same company is now releasing a version that could help the roughly three million people with peanut allergies in the U.S.

Nima announced their new sensor this morning at the Consumer Electronics Show, an annual tech and gadget convention that the internet will be abuzz about for the entire week. Plenty of the devices released at CES are frivolous toys (or sexist beauty products), but in light of my personal experience I’d like to take a moment to extricate Nima from the rest of that garbage. This sensor has the chance to actually change people’s lives. Had I bought one in time, it would have already changed mine.

I don’t have a peanut allergy, but I do have celiac disease, which is an autoimmune disorder that turns my intestines into a guarded fortress, designed to combat the protein complex known as gluten. My body puts me through a series of thoroughly revolting GI symptoms and follows it up with damage to my intestinal lining that takes weeks or months to heal. Eating fries cooked in the same oil as a battered onion ring gives me a stomach ache. Eating a crouton would make me puke.

This makes eating out—previously one of the great joys in my life—an exercise in careful interrogation and constant anxiety. It also means that I often watch my friends and family chow down on foods that I adore, but am unable to eat. Pasta is one them. Most restaurants that serve it don’t offer a gluten-free version, so when I find a spot that allows me to indulge my pasta craving I will loyally return again and again.

Read more at: https://www.popsci.com/nima-allergen-sensor-peanuts-gluten#page-2