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Displays Software Hardware

Google Glass Could Be the Virtual Dieting Pill of the Future 159

Posted by Soulskill from the what-you-see-is-not-what-you-get dept.
MrSeb writes "In a year or two, augmented reality (AR) headsets such as Google Glass may double up as a virtual dieting pill. New research from the University of Tokyo shows that a very simple AR trick can reduce the amount that you eat by 10% — and yes, the same trick, used in the inverse, can be used to increase food consumption by 15%, too. The AR trick is very simple: By donning the glasses, the University of Tokyo's special software 'seamlessly' scales up the size of your food. You pick up an Oreo cookie, and then the software automatically scales it up to 1.5 times its natural size. Using a deformation algorithm, the person's hand is manipulated so that the giant Oreo appears (somewhat) natural. In testing, this simple trick was enough to reduce the amount of food eaten by 10%. The inverse is also true: shrinking the Oreo down to two-thirds its natural size increased food consumption by 15%. This new research dovetails neatly with an area of nutritional science that has received a lot of attention in the United States of Obesity recently: That the size of the serving/plate/cup/receptacle directly affects your intake. The fact is, there's a lot more to dieting than simply reducing your calorific intake and exercising regularly. Your state of mind as you sit down to eat, and your perception of what you're eating, are just as important — which is exciting news, because both of those factors can be hacked."
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Google Glass Could Be the Virtual Dieting Pill of the Future More

Google Glass Could Be the Virtual Dieting Pill of the Future

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  • I never thought I'd see the day (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ukab the Great ( 87152 ) on Tuesday November 20, 2012 @05:13PM (#42047587)

    Where Google would be peddling pills that increase size.

  • It's funny because we believe in "free will" and yet all it takes is a dash of photoshop to make us feel full faster or more slowly. Next up! Humans are a 'blank slate' and behavior is socially determined and has no genetic component!

    (In other matters, how long before the malware attached to diet pill spam will start manipulating our perceptions in order to fatten us up and increase demand?)

    • Re:Ha ha... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by somersault ( 912633 ) on Tuesday November 20, 2012 @05:35PM (#42047895) Homepage Journal

      I don't know about others, but I always decide what I'm going to eat beforehand. Then I always finish what's on my plate. Maybe a couple of times a year if I'm feeling ill or something, I will take a break and finish my food later.

      The last couple of nights I've had 14" stuffed crust plain pizza with extra meat toppings that I added myself. I'm 6'1" and 168lbs (185cm, 76kg). I get regular light to moderate exercise, and eat whatever I want. The key being that I don't want to eat sugary snacks and drinks. I actually find it hard to keep my weight on unless I eat a lot - whereas when I was eating donuts and drinking fizzy pop type drinks every day, I was slowly gaining weight.

      • IOW, you're a natural ectomorph. Nothing wrong with that, but obesity isn't your issue. You're therefore not really the target market.

        • I would definitely be heading towards obese if I hadn't changed how I eat. My dad was always in good shape in his 20s, but got up to 266lbs during his 30s when he started studying Computer Science. He died in his early 40s. My brother got close to that weight too, but started changing his eating habits. One of my sisters is getting pretty fat. The other is no supermodel, but is a bit more careful. I was 189lbs before I realised I was getting out of shape.

          There are definitely different body types out there,

          • If you're eating 14" stuffed crust pizzas with added meat toppings, you are eating serious amounts of crap food. You're just lucky enough that your metabolism is capable of handling it.

            • What's crap about cheese? Lots of good protein and fat in there. When you say "crap", do you mean "high calorie", or "unhealthy", or what?

              If you have a look at something like the Atkins diet, you'll see that luck has little to do with it. People just have the wrong idea that it's fat that makes them fat. Someone else also pointed out something about gut flora/fauna, and I'm pretty sure that has an effect too. If you have a lot of candida then it releases small amounts of a poison into you, which makes you f

              • I'm a huge low-carb fan, I've lost 65 pounds since March on a very low carb diet. Pizza has, usually, crust. And tomato sauce. The latter is at least a useful source of nutrients, but the crust is just a hunk of white flour. Essentially pure sugar, when you get down to it. That's why I called it crap food.

                • Ah okay. Well, I was buying wholemeal pizzas at first, but recently I've been trying normal ones again. They're valuable as a source of calories to stop me from losing weight at least. I've been having pizza maybe 3 or 4 times a week for dinner, 2 or 3 sandwiches during the day, sometimes porridge too..

          • There are definitely different body types out there, but to get truly obese, you have to be eating serious amounts of crap food, and to keep eating it even after you notice that you're putting on weight.

            Nope. Maybe for you, but not for everyone. I'm 5'10", 240 lbs. and I eat extremely healthy most of the time. I cook nearly all of my food myself with a scale and notebook and all of that annoying stuff (I know the exact amount of calories I eat probably 80-90% of the time). I also work out 6 days a w

            • Maybe you have the wrong idea about what is healthy and unhealthy. Do you drink "diet" drinks? I consider them unhealthy in general. Total calories doesn't matter much, look more at the amount of carbs you eat, and when you eat them. You don't even need a whole lots of vitamins. When I tried eating low fat, my weight stayed exactly the same. I tried cutting out carbs, and the pounds were falling off despite me being at a low weight already, so I worked some "good" carbs back in pretty quickly. The level of

              • No, I'm pretty well educated about nutrition and I eat extremely healthy foods and have healthy habits. I try very, very hard to live cleanly. Mostly vegetarian, whole foods, cooked in a healthy way and with lots of variety. I rarely eat any processed foods. My one health vice is alcohol, but even then it's usually moderate and I account for it in my calorie tracking.

                It really is my body type. My dad, every one of my uncles, and probably 2/3 of my cousins all have the same build. We're pretty much

                • You should maybe try "intermittent fasting". I guess you could call it the fad of the moment, and different people do it differently, but it's worth trying as a way of eating if you are having trouble losing fat. You eat every day, and eat the same amount as normal, but you squeeze your eating into a 6-8 hour window each day (I usually start eating around midday), to give your body more time to run off of fat each day.That should make you more efficient at burning off fat. If you eat all through the day, th

                  • I like to eat waaaaay too much to fast! I also workout often, and when I exercise my body sends crazy "eat now or die" signals to me. I'm not sure if I could keep up my workout schedule if I was regularly fasting.

                    I've figured out how to adapt to my body for the most part. The biggest thing for me has been trying to cook for myself 100% of the time and switching to a mostly vegetarian diet. I've found a lot of things like tofu stir fry that are good and allow me to eat really large servings at low

                    • Yep, good discipline helps of course. Maybe try drinking more too. Apparently a lot of people can't distinguish well the difference between signals for hunger and thirst.

      • I'm much the same. Just turned 31. 6'2" 172 lbs (188cm and 78kg).

        The only time I started to get a bit chubby was around 7-8 years ago, when I developed a taste for Pepsi (I blame my GF at the time). Drank 2 or 3 cans a day, plus a big glass with dinner. Ballooned up to just over 200 pounds in about 6 months. Swore off the soda, switched to unsweetened teas, fruit juice on occasion, and a ton of water (plus beer, and bourbon or scotch). All the while my food and exercise remained relatively constant

        • Be careful with the beer, it's every bit as bad as pepsi if consumed in similar quantities. Otherwise, you're right, people forget the liquid calories are still real. 2-3 cans of coke is 500-600ish calories, beer is similar. That's an extra 1lb per week of weight gain.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by metlin ( 258108 )

        The key to staying in shape is basically calories in vs. calories out. No matter what people's excuse, you cannot violate the laws of thermodynamics. Your body isn't going to magically add "fat" from the air.

        I eat a lot. However, I monitor whatever I eat very closely -- tracking every morsel and every calorie (I personally use LiveStrong MyPlate, but MyFitnessPal is also good). As long as I am within my calorie intake on a weekly basis and hit macros (ratio of protein, fat, and carbs), I am happy.

        I also wor

        • Not exactly correct. There's a significant difference in base metabolic rate between different individuals. For a given individual your rate slows as you age, but there can be big differences between individuals of the same age. Men and women are different too, men can eat more.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by metlin ( 258108 )

            Sure. However, my original argument still stands. If you find that you gain at 2500 calories, and lose at 1500 calories, your TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) is somewhere in between. Can the numbers be absolutely accurate and dead-on? Of course not -- they are meant to be directional. But you will need to use them to figure out what the calories are at which you gain, and what are the calories at which you lose.

            Unless you disagree that for *you* as an individual, eating below your TDEE will make you l

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by TheLink ( 130905 )

          The key to staying in shape is basically calories in vs. calories out. No matter what people's excuse, you cannot violate the laws of thermodynamics.

          That oversimplification overlooks many things.
          1) Not all consumed calories are converted with the same efficiency or even converted at all, or converted to the same things. A protein calorie is not the same as a fructose calorie nor an ethanol calorie. Look it up if you don't believe me. If you believe the idiotic fallacy that a calorie is a calorie consider pouring diesel into a gasoline car and vice versa.
          2) A significant percentage of the calories are _excreted_. Lots of dieticians and even a few scienti

          • Starches and sugar are both types of carbohydrate chemically speaking, but the terms are used differently in food science. You can think of "carbohydrates" as they are usually referred to in food science as sugars bound in a more complex chemical arrangement.

            If you eat sugar in natural form where it is mixed with fiber (like an apple, for example) then your body will digest it differently than if you eat that same amount of sugar in candy or soda. Refined sugar and processed carbohydrates provoke diffe

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by TheLink ( 130905 )

              Starches break down to glucose. sugar (sucrose) breaks down to fructose and glucose. Glucose can be used by most of the cells in the body. Fructose is mainly processed by the liver (a few other things can use it). Again calories are not all the same.

              It is easier to get a fatty liver from consuming sucrose or fructose (or alcohol for that matter), than from consuming starch (which is still harmful in excess). http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletters/Harvard_Heart_Letter/2011/September/abundance-of-fructose- [harvard.edu]

              • You're ignoring the more important figure in that reference, which is glycemic load. Glycemic index measures how much each gram of available carbohydrate (meaning total carbs minus fiber) raises your blood sugar relative to pure glucose. It does not take into account the amount of available carbohydrate that is actually present in the food, which means that the GI by itself isn't all that helpful. No matter what the serving size or amount of fiber consumed (and fiber blocks carbohydrates from being abso

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by TheLink ( 130905 )
                  I was not ignoring glycemic load. That's why I specifically said double the carbs.

                  If you are going to consume the same amount of carbs to meet your daily energy requirements, eating spaghetti+something more nutritious than apples (and less sugary) would be better than eating apples - since apples have fructose.

                  Eating lots of that nutritious "something" to meet your caloric requirements and desired carb:protein:oils ratios might be too expensive or even unhealthy.
                  • Well, OK. How do you think pasta is healthier than apples? Fructose? Excessive fructose can be a problem, but it's pretty difficult to get an excessive amount from fruits and vegetables. I would wager a large amount of money that nearly all people who have a problem consuming excessive fructose got that problem from processed sugar, not fruits and veggies.

                    Whether you're overconsuming fructose or you're overconsuming glocuse,it ends up as body fat either way. And eating foods that have a high glyce

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by metlin ( 258108 )

                      I think people are over-complicating this. At a macro level, your body is not going to care if it gets its carbs and sugar from an apple or from a piece of candy.

                      As long as your protein intake is sufficiently high to maintain muscle and your fat intake is high enough to support your hormone production, any additional calories -- carbs or protein -- are a bonus.

                      I follow something called IIFYM -- If It Fits Your Macros. As long as your macros (protein, fat, carbs) meet your requirements (and this changes base

        • It's not quite so simple though. Your metabolism varies by how much you eat, hence after sugar you go hyper for a while, and then around 4 hours later you get sleepy (well, I do). Apparently if you fast your body switches into a more efficient mode where it is more likely to try to repair/sustain body cells than create new ones by division, as this is more energy efficient. Don't really have any references for that though so I'm not sure how true it is. It would be one explanation for why people who eat les

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Hatta ( 162192 )

      What you mean "we"? Free will is wishful thinking. There is only the laws of physics. The laws of physics are either deterministic or probabilistic(statistically deterministic). There's no room for anything to be "free", it would violate f=ma.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Hentes ( 2461350 )

      This is a trick that only works once or twice. You can only fool your subconscious that long.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rwa2 ( 4391 ) *

      drat... and all this time, I thought I had high metabolism or something, but it was really just my skinny glasses :/

      Well, actually, I'm myopic, so it should probably work in reverse.

      I don't actually believe in dieting, I think it just triggers your body to go into anti-starvation mass-storage mode. Just eat well and exercise well and let your gut sort it out.

    • It's funny because we believe in "free will"

      Speak for yourself. To me, this "free will" stuff awfully smells of religion.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bondsbw ( 888959 )

      The possibility of free will does not preclude instinct, habit, or indifference.

      Whereas predetermination does preclude importance. Therefore, if either of us are right, your comment doesn't matter.

  • Your state of mind as you sit down to eat, and your perception of what you're eating, are just as important

    Sweet. So the secret to losing weight is just to make everything you pick up look like a giant dog turd...

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Teppy ( 105859 )
      Actually, that's more or less true - a number of studies [getbetterhealth.com] have found that blue (color of food, color of room, etc.) suppresses appetite. Some molds are blue, so it's plausible that there's an evolutionary advantage to being disgusted by blue food.

  • Lending credence to the old saying... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    "My eyes were bigger than my stomach"

  • Just display calories, equivalent distant need to run to burn calories, and total calorie for the day?
    Ore:
    100 calories.
    Walk 1 mile
    800 calories daily total.

    Or have it tell the bank to not allow any more prepackaged food purchase for the day? In fact, you could have it only allow food purchases during certain time.
    That could be a great diet aid.

    Just enough of a road block to make getting food for snacking a pain in the ass to get.

    • Just display calories, equivalent distant need to run to burn calories, and total calorie for the day?

      I suspect it wouldn't work as well as what is being discussed here because it attempts to operate on a rational level, and eating decisions are usually not reasoned, and rational feedback often is not as effective as mechanisms that hook into visceral, subconscious responses.

      Though, of course, if you know of research that shows that that kind of approach works as well as the research shown here, great, p

    • Just display calories, equivalent distant need to run to burn calories, and total calorie for the day?
      Ore:
      100 calories.
      Walk 1 mile
      800 calories daily total.

      What do you mean? Copper ore? Tin ore? Iron ore?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Belial6 ( 794905 )
      Great, then we can have people feeling emotionally good about eating the right number of calories in chocolate cake, while still suffering from horrible nutrition related illnesses. The ELEM (Eat Less Exercise More) diet experiment has been tried. We have overwhelming evidence of it's catastrophic failure.

  • Do You Wear Glasses? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 20, 2012 @05:19PM (#42047669)

    As a wearer of bifocals, I've seen the effects of objects being magnified and its dimensions being distorted form reality. But, I've also seen that the brain learns to compensate for this within a day or two and everything returns to normal.

    I suspect that if one was to experience this distortion only when eating that it might take a while longer for the brain to compensate. But, compensate it will.

    If you want to lose weight, eat less! You fat bastard!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Fned ( 43219 )

      If you want to lose weight, eat less!

      Except to have the willpower to decide to eat less, you need to eat more! Oh, shit! [nytimes.com]

    • I'm not FAT, I'm just big-boned.

      My Obesity is DRUG INDUCED, you insensitive clod!

      My Obesity is due to a HORMONAL IMBALANCE, you insensitive clod.

      and, for extra points....

      My Obesity is a LIFESTYLE CHOICE, you politically-insensitive clod.

    • Re:Do You Wear Glasses? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 20, 2012 @07:36PM (#42049467)

      When I initially read the bit "the same trick, used in the inverse, can be used to increase food consumption", I admit it got my attention. Although speaking as someone with extreme digestive problems, I seriously doubt this little visual "trick" would have any effect on me what so ever.

      However your advice of "If you want to lose weight, eat less! You fat bastard!" pretty much struck a nerve.

      My problem is the exact reverse, an almost total lack of any form of appetite.
      I will, if I'm lucky at the best of times, feel hungry once a week. The rest of the time it feels as if I have just eaten a large meal a few moments ago, except that it lasts pretty much 24/7.

      I'm 6'0, over 30, and have to fight to stay over 100lb.
      For me it's a daily (sometimes bi-daily) struggle to literally force myself to eat while feeling full, all the while fighting back nausea at the very thought of it.
      The most I've ever weighed was 130lb while on a heavy steroid treatment for six months. Specifically Megestrol, which is generally prescribed to cancer patients in their last stages.

      All too often, people such as yourself will completely dismiss any potential medical reason that affects body weight, simply because for a large number of people it is a self-induced condition.
      I however can't help but realize some overweight people who DO starve themselves would feel similar to me, of course in reverse.

      Perhaps if you had qualified your statements, they might not be so enraging, but alas you did not. Some people quite literally can not help it, be it for physical medical reasons, or even just mental problems which I might add can feel just as real as the physical ones. All because a few people can not control themselves.
      Not only would your advice simply Not Work for everyone, but in some cases could be quite damaging and unhealthy. Worse, you seem to completely dismiss away the fact the root of a single persons problem is what needs addressed, and it is not always eating unhealthy.

      I'm sorry for the rant here, but it's these such attitudes that cause even further damage, not to mention the psychological abuse that results whether
      you intended it or not.

    • Your bifocals magnify everything, including your hand, etc. So you get a general proportionality, and your brain figures out roughly how big that Oreo is. I suspect that if the goggles only magnified the oreo, your brain wouldn't make the same adjustment, because it isn't an across the board magnification.

    • And if you want to get better gas mileage, put less fuel in your car you gas guzzling bastard!!

  • because both of those factors can be hacked.

    I prefer the term "augmented real-time photoshopped derivatives of life apparatuses and symbols", but I digress. Somehow I get the feeling marketing people have known how to "hack" this for years.

  • You didn't know? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Come one, please don't tell me you didn't know that the plate size affects the amount you are eating? I have been to countless dinners/lunches where someone would complain about the portion when the food arrived (on a large plate) and later not finish the plate because it was actually quite a lot.

  • by the act of simply wearing Google Glasses, which made social contact with females impossible, which led to lack of burned of calories while engaging in sexual intercourse.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ocker3 ( 1232550 )
      Science says you're right

      http://www.fitsugar.com/Health-Benefits-Kissing-18527605 [fitsugar.com]
      Even just kissing boosts your metabolism and helps you burn calories, plus there are other health benefits. If Google spent less time on making Oreos look larger and more time helping us geeks get decent dates, they'd achieve the same effect. Not as good for sales of Google Glasses though...

  • Make certain things bigger and certain things smaller. Maker her a redhead. Make him Brad Pitt.

    Self-delusion is a grand thing.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Hentes ( 2461350 )

      Or spam mails that hack into your glass and make it seem like the pills have actually worked.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cfalcon ( 779563 )

      Is it delusion to modify the appearance of something, if only the appearance is reality? If everyone wants to, of their own free will, opt into a reality where I'm model-hot, sign me up. You all have my permission to view me as something about as hot as Brad Pitt in his prime, if that technology exists and people want to use it that would be fantastic.

  • Short term gain only? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I think the real question is, do we take visual indicators of food intake based on experience, or is it hard wired? If the former, this trick will only work for a while until your brain finally realizes "hey, I'm not getting as much food as I used to, maybe I should adjust portion sizes up", and now all of a sudden you are used to eating portions that "look" much bigger, and the gain from such trickery is lost.

    Not to mention what might happen when you stop using the glasses - all of a sudden all the food a

  • Yeah, I know, an animated gif is a low-brow post, but this is how I see trying to eat food that's something like an optical illusion... I can't help that it's best described visually... so here:

    http://gifsoup.com/webroot/animatedgifs7/2953647_o.gif [gifsoup.com]

  • Google Glass != Full HUD (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Google Glass has a display in the top right corner of your view - the majority of your vision is unobstructed. Look at the photos of the product being worn (not the "one day" concept reel) and think about where in your view-space the screen will exist.

    Something like the Oculus Rift + head mounted cameras? Sure. Google Glass in it's current form? No chance.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by am 2k ( 217885 )

      Something like the Oculus Rift + head mounted cameras? Sure. Google Glass in it's current form? No chance.

      Besides being a giant device to be carried around all day, the thing you lose with the Oculus Rift is that the eyes can't focus on anything any more, since the focus is fixed on near-infinity. Thus, you lose an important depth cue for the brain. This is a huge problem for long-time use, especially in AR.

  • Spoon boy: Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth.
    Neo: What truth?
    Spoon boy: There is no spoon.
    Neo: There is no spoon?
    Spoon boy: Then you'll see, that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.

  • One important factor to consider is that how much you eat in a single sitting is just your brain's estimate of how much food you need at the moment to maintain your metabolism. ...and, since foods vary in calorie density, it's often wrong.

    It makes up for this the next day. If it consumed more energy then it thought, you'll be less hungry. If it consumed less, you'll be more hungry.

    So that this might work for a single meal isn't much of a surprise. I'd expect it to fail for any long-term use, however.

    To l

    • At the risk of making her angry - she hates being anthropomorphised [shouldn't that be feminomorphised - Ed] - nature probably did intend you to pig yourself silly whenever the opportunity arises.

      This is because it's only in the last hundred years, which is a blink on her timescales, that such opportunities regularly occur.

  • The idea that, "there's a lot more to dieting than simply reducing your calorific intake and exercising regularly", is garbage. That's all that controlling your weight boils down to. You could stick me in a room full of ice cream and pizza, as long as I don't eat excess calories I won't gain weight. All I see is an article essentially shifting the blame off of the person in control with the good-ole, "it's not your fault", line. Bull-crap. If you're overweight it IS your fault.

    If you lack the will

    • it's not an excuse, it's more like an elaboration, or an insight into what losing weight (and maintaining a lower weight) will feel like.

      there are many recent studies indicating that maintaining a lower weight after having had a higher weight is really more difficult than maintaining the same low weight without having been heavier. it seems that the body has a set point for how much to eat which is either impossible or very difficult to reset once a high caloric intake has been achieved.

      assuming for the mom

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kergan ( 780543 )

      The idea that, "there's a lot more to dieting than simply reducing your calorific intake and exercising regularly", is garbage. That's all that controlling your weight boils down to. You could stick me in a room full of ice cream and pizza, as long as I don't eat excess calories I won't gain weight.

      You are wrong on many levels:

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM [youtube.com]

      http://www.uctv.tv/skinny-on-obesity/ [www.uctv.tv]

  • Is this a temporary effect, though? (Score:3)

    by brit74 ( 831798 ) on Tuesday November 20, 2012 @06:12PM (#42048425)
    Is this only a temporary effect, though? I could imagine that your mind creates an association between the size of the food you see and the amount of fullness you feel, but if you start changing your visual perception, I could imagine that this visual/feeling-of-fullness connection could be changed. If true, then you'd reduce your consumption for a short period of time (maybe weeks or months), but then your perception would change, you'd begin eating normally (despite the larger appearance of food), and if you stop using the glasses, maybe you'd continue eating larger portions until your mind re-adjusted itself in the reverse direction.

    (A slightly bizarre effect would be that you'd become dependent on the glasses to maintain your weight. If you stop using the glasses, you'd go through a short-phase of gaining weight again.)
  • Magnifying the food also caused the subject to miss when trying to pick it up 10% of the time.
  • When that amount of food doesn't keep you from being hungry you'll adjust to eating larger-looking portions, I would bet my left testicle on it.

  • perceptions of size and norm (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Onymous Coward ( 97719 ) on Tuesday November 20, 2012 @06:26PM (#42048637) Homepage

    Does the constant advertising of overly large portions of food also train us to think that such portion sizes are normal? And if we eat a healthy size instead, do we feel like we're not having enough?

    • Hm. Your comment got me to thinking about some experiences that I have had. Another comment further up in the comments helped to spark this thought:

      It seems that our bodies need a certain amount of X in its diet. I am unsure what X is. Proteins? Carbohydrates? Some mixture of the two? I do not know, but I will call it X.

      X is, apparently, very expensive. What is the best way to maximize profits in relation to X? Add Y. What is Y? Again, I do not know. Some sort of filler material that you can eat a lot of bu

  • It's essentially the same concept as The Small Plate Movement [wikipedia.org] but implemented using "sufficiently advanced technology".
  • The real question here is, how long will it be before the brain adapts to this trickery? Not like we eat less of "large" food like popcorns, we just eat a bucket full of them.
  • What happens when you become accustomed to eating virtual super sized food and you suddenly turn it off? Do you eat more because everything is normal sized now? Probably. Don't take off your Google Glass or you'll put the pounds back on.
  • I've heard that to combat obesity, several states in the next year are going to impose strict upper caps on junk food and sugary soft drink sizes, under the premise that if the size is smaller, then people will not eat as much, but this study appears to confirm the opposite.

  • I'm very dubious about this. I don't spend much time looking at my food. I'm looking at what I'm reading or my fellow diners, generally family, whom I'm conversing with. My eyes spend very little time on my food.

  • I bullshit you not, there was an actual study that proved that following around fat people and yelling at them, insulting their weight, and calling them names when they ate something unhealthy, it reduced their calorie intake significantly. So it'd be pretty easy for Google glasses to do the same thing.

    • *Google glasses have detected pizza in view*

      "Move along, fatty. That alone will add 5 pounds to your fat ass."

      *Google glasses have detected an attractive member of your preferred gender*

      "Remember that pizza you turned down earlier? Keep up the good work and (s)he is all yours."

    • Did it also reduce the amount of teeth in the yelling person's mouth?

  • Google Glass is only an overlay on your vision, not a replacement for your vision. So glass can make an overlay that looks bigger, but it won't replace and scale everything. Oh and it only works when you look up into the hud, it isn't there all the time...

  • Google make a lot of money from advertising.

    I bet there will be a lot of demand from the fast food franchises to make their portions look smaller. They'd pay Google a fortune I'm sure.

  • Won't work with Google Glass (Score:3)

    by swillden ( 191260 ) <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Tuesday November 20, 2012 @09:43PM (#42050501) Journal
    Glass doesn't have the ability to change the appearance of things in your field of vision. It deliberately places its screen above and to the right of your normal area of vision so as not to obscure your visual field. For this to work with Glass, you'd have to carefully only look at what you're eating in the Glass screen... and it would probably take a lot of practice to learn to navigate the cookie to your mouth while watching it in the Glass screen. Might be easier if you looked at it in the screen and then closed your eyes before trying to eat.

    • Glass doesn't have the ability to change the appearance of things in your field of vision

      Yarrrr, where is my EyeTap [wikipedia.org]? Fuck google glass, I want reality overlay!

  • Are they likely to be augmented reality? With a glass reflector in front of the eye, I expect it to be more of a translucent HUD overlay.

    They may well have gps+compass-based direction indicators for navigating, but I doubt that they'd be capable of a solid-looking images tracking accurately over what you see.

  • The fact is, there's a lot more to dieting than simply reducing your calorific intake and exercising regularly.

    ACTUALLY, there isn't.

    Can we stop perpetuating this please - it is *that* simple, and if anyone tells you otherwise, they're either ignorant, or trying to make money out of the people who are ignorant to this fact.

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