The Japanese company Joy World Pacific has developed this spectroscopic calorimeter called the Calory Answer, which can accurately calculate the caloric content in food (broken down into sugar, protein, and fat calories) through near-infrared analysis. All you need to do is put the food in the microwave oven-sized box and the Calory Answer gives you the nutritional stats. Oddly the Calory Answer runs on a Windows-based platform, although it was initially developed as a Linux machine. Right now, the machine is far too expensive for consumer use (approximately $28,000) but Joy World Pacific hopes to bring down the production costs significantly in the near future.
From Nikkei Net (subscription required).