The obesity epidemic has spread to once slim and trim Japanese men who are using cutting edge technology to battle the bulge. Japanese men have turned to cell phone cameras to help them lose weight by keeping track of how many calories they eat.

The scheme is simple. Instead of using a paper and pencil to record what they eat in a day, then look up the calories of that food and add them all up the men just pull out their cell phones and snap a photo of what they are about to stuff in their mouths.

The program is only available on a test basis for now and men have to wait three days to get a tally of what they consumed. But health officials think the program will help.

The trial program has been run for two years by public health insurance offices in the Osaka region in western Japan. They signed up 100 heart patients the first year. The second year they signed up patients who had diabetes or who were clinically obese.

Patients e-mail their photos in and get an analysis of what they ate back, along with recommendations from a dietician. The service costs $21 a month after a $37 joiner's fee.