Digestive disorders can be difficult to diagnose. Even if a specific disorder is suspected, such as wheat or lactose intolerance, it can be difficult for a person to cut that ingredient from their diets for long enough to ascertain the effect it has on their digestive health. Checking hundreds or thousands of food labels over a period of several months is difficult.
This service will deliver a crate of food once or twice a week to a person's house and / or workplace. The crate contains everything the person will need to eat for a week, and includes enough quantity and variety for the subject to not desire food from any other source. It includes ready meals, pre-prepared lunch-boxes, snacks and raw ingredients for home cooking.
The ingredients are carefully varied each week or over several weeks, to test for various digestive pathologies. The patient is not informed what substance is being tested, if any, and keeps a log log recording bloatedness, cramps, bristol scale, etc. The data are fed into a computer or returned by post.
After several months, a report is produced detailing the substances most suspected of causing an adverse reaction in the subject.
Of course, there's no reason why a person couldn't do this all themselves, or under instruction from a GP or nutritionist, or even at some wacky detox camp, but the comparative simplicity (no label-reading, medical research or number crunching required) and low cost of this service (no specialist consultation required; just pay for food you'd need to eat anyway) would give it an advantage.
Having successfully diagnosed its customers, the company will then have a captive audience for its follow-up product of a subscription of overpriced specialist health foods delivered weekly, for life.
Alternatively, this could be a collaborative community project which maintains an assortment of pre-prepared shopping baskets ready to checkout at major online food retailers, and some free software for analysing the results.-- idris83, Nov 16 2011 Could also be used to 'test-run' various dietary regimes, e.g. vegan, Atkins, fast-food, etc.-- pocmloc, Nov 16 2011 /cheers for Ling!/-- bungston, Nov 17 2011 I would love it anyway but the sheer evilth of not telling people what they're allergic to and selling them the only food they can eat... [++++]-- Voice, Nov 17 2011 // /cheers for Ling!/ //
I hate it when people do that... my built in paranoia means that I believe that this is a piss-take.-- Ling, Nov 18 2011 We know you're paranoid.
We watch you.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Nov 18 2011 /turns cheers into moist sneezing, to assuage paranoia/-- bungston, Nov 18 2011 ^ ? looks like <idris83> is not a happy bunny.-- Ling, Nov 18 2011 Bun! Your [+] being mostly for the phrase "log log".-- not_only_but_also, Nov 19 2011 random, halfbakery