Dean Kamen Invents Stomach Pump For Dieters

You may soon have another option to lose weight other than dieting and exercise thanks to Dean Kamen. The inventor has designed a pump that can suck the cheeseburgers out of your stomach and replace it with water. From the article: "The pump was invented by Dean Kamen, the same man who brought you the Segway, and perhaps more fittingly, a breakthrough dialysis machine. This pump works by routing a tube directly into the user's stomach and then sucking out some of the gooey, masticated goodness. The user then squeezes a little plastic bag to replace that volume of stomach-stew with water. Sounds great, right? There are some catches though. It hasn't been approved by the FDA yet, and some of the users in the tests had problems with certain foods like 'cauliflower, broccoli, Chinese food, stir fry, snow peas, pretzels, chips, and steak.' Oh, also there's a tube going into your stomach that you use to pump unpuked vomit into the toilet. Participants in trial studies did manage to lose about half of their excess weight this way, around 45 pounds on average, so apparently it works."

Comments

Isn't this just bulimia?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or at least a marketable, respectable form of bulimia.

Re:Isn't this just bulimia?

[19thNervousBreakdown]

Yes, it is. At least, it's bulimia. I don't see anything respectable at all about surgically altering yourself so you can gorge and still lose weight, and I guess time will tell if it's marketable (although I doubt it'll be even as successful as lap band surgery), but yeah, it's definitely mechanical barfing.

Re:Isn't this just bulimia?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The tube should ameliorate some of the dangerous effects of repeated exposure to gastric acids by the sensitive tissues and teeth of the mouth and throat, so there is that...

Re:Isn't this just bulimia?

[AuMatar]

Wrong question. How many people love eating, don't want to be fat, and think that this could possibly be a good or healthy idea? And want to deal with the disposal and cleanup of the pumped material? I love eating and it would be great to lose 100 pounds, but I know that this isn't safe and is actually counter-productive.

Did You Think, Maybe...

[Greyfox]

Just not eat all those cheeseburgers in the first place? Hah! Crazy talk, I know!

Re:Did You Think, Maybe...

[RedK]

Oh please, the body is not some kind of magic entity that can ignore the laws of physics. Your body needs energy to function and the calories you consume are that energy. Your metabolism can slow down to some extent, but it's not as drastic as you say. "Starvation mode" is simply what the people who binge in secret tell you. Adjust your caloric intake to under or just at your base metabolism and you will lose weight, your body won't magically start running on hopes and dreams while it stores calories.

The opposite is true, your body doesn't "burn the extra calories" either, it stores them. That's how you gain weight. The plain fact is, the only way to lose weight is to consume less calories than you burn. No magic hocus pocus, no "starvation mode", no nothing. The more you consume, the more you need to burn. And aside from a few big name athletes, exercise will burn less than your base metabolism anyhow (my base metabolism is at about 1700-1750 calories/day last time I had it measured).

Broccoli? Really?

[GenieGenieGenie]

Why on earth would you want to suck out the broccoli? This gadget needs a fiberscopic camera that will allow you to view the semi-digested morsels and suck out the ones you don't want to keep.

My Reaction

[jIyajbe]

Eeewww.

Seriously, EEEWWW.

Re:Reminds me of food waste statistics

[LordLucless]

"There are nearly a billion malnourished people in the world, but all of them could be lifted out of hunger with less than a quarter of the food wasted in Europe and North America"

No, they couldn't, not unless that food could be transported to them and distributed before it became inedible. In countries with good infrastructure, that's not a problem, but those billion malnourished generally don't live in a place with good air freight service, well-maintained highways, and refrigerated trucking.

Any solution to global poverty is going to have to largely rely on bootstrapping local production. Despite importing a lot of food, most western nations export a whole lot more - they have sufficient capacity to feed themselves, and trade for variety/seasonality. Getting developing nations to the point of self sufficiency is key - anything else leaves them dependant on the developed world, which will screw them over when a drought/famine/whatever hits, and we have less excess to give.

Couldn't people just eat less?

[davesag]

This looks to me to be the single most disgusting invention I've ever seen. Surely it's easier to just eat smaller meals rather than gorge, then pump partially digested food out through a pipe through your gut. I guess it tops the Segway as stupidest invention ever.

Re:why are people driven to eat too much?

[lxs]

I'm reading a lot of excuses in your post. It's gut bacteria it's pollution, it's Big Corn, it's stress. I'm not reading anything about taking personal responsibility. Losing weight means running a calorie deficit. This will make you feel bad. The only way to get though that is to get off the notion that you should feel good all the time and volutarily put yourself in a situation where you're hungry and feeling bad. that feeling will pass in a couple of weeks and it will strengthen your willpower.