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Robotics Education

'Student Should Have a Healthy-Looking BMI': How Universities Bend Over Backwards To Accommodate Food Delivery Robots (404media.co) 125

samleecole writes: A food delivery robot company instructed a public university to promote its service on campus with photographs and video featuring only students who "have a healthy-looking BMI," [body mass index] according to emails and documents I obtained via a public records request. The emails also discuss how ordering delivery via robot should become a "habit" for a "captured" customer base of students on campus.

These highly specific instructions show how universities around the country are going to extreme lengths to create a welcoming environment on campus for food delivery robots that sometimes have trouble crossing the street and need traffic infrastructure redesigned for them in order to navigate campus, a relatively absurd cache of public records obtained by 404 Media reveals.

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'Student Should Have a Healthy-Looking BMI': How Universities Bend Over Backwards To Accommodate Food Delivery Robots

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  • by systemd-anonymousd ( 6652324 ) on Wednesday January 17, 2024 @01:44PM (#64167727)

    Is this supposed to be controversial? Who cares.

    • Is this supposed to be controversial? Who cares.

      News flash! Marketing firm uses idealized and unrepresentative images in marketing collateral! More at 11!

      Snark aside, I'm pretty sure the instructions are run of the mill. The people I see drinking beer do not look as active, lean, and symmetrical as the people in beer ads. Driving a sports car does not in fact make hot women want to have sex with me.

      Whether that's a good marketing strategy isn't for you or I to say.

    • Is this supposed to be controversial?

      It's similar to the old "More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette." marketing campaign in that they want to depict users of their service as healthy, rather than the typical outcome of those who are constantly snacking on fast food burritos at 2AM. Of course, beer commercials do the same thing. It's always a beach party with a bunch of nearly anorexic barely legal girls, and never some overweight balding middle-aged guy in a wifebeater sitting on a couch by himself.

      • Re:News? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by cayenne8 ( 626475 ) on Wednesday January 17, 2024 @03:35PM (#64168149) Homepage Journal
        When I went to college in the stone ages...the only food delivered was pizza.

        When there was a week when we could save up enough money to get one, we got one and were happy.

        How much disposable income to students these days have while living on campus to order food?

        We had cafeteria plan and well, occasional spare money saved for a pizza (coupon'ed to hell).

        Nothing more than that and we were able to study....and survive.

        • Hell, I had to save up for the Pizza Hut $1 bread sticks in college. Life was so much better when Keno showed up with $1 jumbo slices. Damn, that puts us at nearly 5.5% annual pizza inflation

        • Just based on my own observations it seems like the parents of gen Zers are more generous with providing for their children. Perhaps they're rebelling against their own stingy parents or they feel guilty about the world they're leaving their progeny and money is the only way they can make up for it.

          Gig economy work is also a thing that didn't exist back when you were in school. It's pretty easy to earn a few bucks doing grocery and food deliveries on the side if you have a car. Logically you might assume

        • We had a shared kitchen in our dorm and took turns cooking for the whole crew!

          And a quite good cafeteria on campus, but that would have required to acutally, well, GO to campus and lectures :-)

        • How much disposable income to students these days have while living on campus to order food?

          Student loans / credit cards now provide almost unlimited possibility for incurring debt while living very comfortably during college. "Spend now, pay later!" College life is pretty luxurious.

          Then comes graduation and life in the real world -where you are expected to pay back what you borrowed by working at a job that pays less than you lived on while in school. This is why so many fresh-graduates-with-no-experience demand exorbitant salaries: they expect to continue living to the standards they have bec

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          The difference is that they are already taking out an insanely massive loan to cover the cost of tuition, so a little more on top for a slightly better quality of life isn't going to make a huge difference.

        • by mjwx ( 966435 )

          When I went to college in the stone ages...the only food delivered was pizza.

          When there was a week when we could save up enough money to get one, we got one and were happy.

          How much disposable income to students these days have while living on campus to order food?

          We had cafeteria plan and well, occasional spare money saved for a pizza (coupon'ed to hell).

          Nothing more than that and we were able to study....and survive.

          You misunderstand... This is a blatant slashvertisement. The "Students should have a healthy BMI" is just the clickbait headline to get universities and businesses to buy delivery robots and associated shitty app.

          But to debate your point, I think the biggest difference between university now and university 20 years ago, especially in the US is that the cost has risen so much and people have to take out so much debt for it that the poor are being priced out of a university education, I mean even more pric

    • I know I care, at least a bit. Why are college campus' spending their own resources to redesign infrastructure to accommodate this stuff?

    • I find surprising that a sub-contractor "instructed" the university how to behave. The stuff reads like what a marketing person would write as instructions to an advertising agency, so it's clear that they're trying to use the university itself as part of their sales and marketing. They're asking the university to take the photos, to use the appropriate looking models, to arrange the robots in a pleasing manner, etc. It's amazingly presumptuous.

    • High fecundity sells, baby!
    • It sounds like a very convenient service! Also it's a great environment to figure out robot delivery. ButmMaybe the food delivery people don't like it since robots and automation are the end goal.
  • so can't use the football team in your marketing?

    • so can't use the football team in your marketing?

      Only if you exclude the line men. Receivers, DBs, safeties, and QBs are generally not possessed with layers of fat. You could even use a running back.

      If you're talking about European football (i.e. soccer), any player is perfectly acceptable. You don't see them looking like beach balls.
      • And the kicker.

        • Thank you. Missed them. Should also include the punter.

        • Who here has been on a college campus with these things trundling down the sidewalk who hasn't been tempted to look both ways for anyone watching, and then give it a kick sending it on its back spinning its wheels in the air.

          The thing is that cameras are everywhere, and I might end up helping University Police with their inquiries.

          Or find myself in the Provost's office attempting to explain why I shouldn't resign my position at the U.

  • by deadaluspark ( 991914 ) on Wednesday January 17, 2024 @01:55PM (#64167757)
    Trying to get people literally "addicted" to your products?

    Why do we go so hard after drug pushers when literally every company in the country uses similar tactics?
    It's like literally every company took all the worst ideas from gambling psychology and ran with it for an entire fucking economy.
    • to attack the left wing in America. Seriously, look it up. That's why. Also the CIA funded their death squads in South America with the sale of crack in the inner cities. Again, look it up. It sounds like a bad movie plot, it's not.
      • And to think, Nixon is beginning to look like a paragon of integrity and evenhandedness compared to today's politicians
        • Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)

          by rsilvergun ( 571051 )
          Honestly just compared to Trump and the GOP. The Dems do a bit of run of the mill insider trading and every now and then one of 'em gets caught with their hands in the cookie jar, but a) they get prosecuted and b) there are calls for them to resign from the entire party and they don't survive a primary if they don't.

          It's all pretty minor stuff compared to say, Rodger Stone calling in a hit job or Donald Trump trying to end Democracy or even Green showing off Dick Pics from the president's son on CSPAN.
          • a) they get prosecuted

            I missed how Trump wasn't getting prosecuted

            They do resign, but because of that you don't know if they would survive a primary or not if they didn't

    • by taustin ( 171655 )

      Trying to get people literally "addicted" to your products?

      Why do we go so hard after drug pushers when literally every company in the country uses similar tactics?

      Just to play devil's advocate, I feel I should point out that drug dealers aren't arrested for their tactics at getting people addicted, they're arrested for selling illegal products.

      For the moment, at least, food delivery via robot is not, in fact, criminal.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Why do we go so hard after drug pushers when literally every company in the country uses similar tactics?

      Because "hard drugs" are physically addictive and generally make it difficult to be a productive member of society while you're addicted. There's also a bit of Puritanism in play, because some people just hate the idea of others indulging in forms of hedonism that they personally find objectionable.

      • What does "hard drugs" even mean? Tobacco and alcohol are physically addictive. Many commonly prohibited drugs are not. And most of the problems associated with prohibited drugs are caused by the prohibition, rather than the drug itself.
    • Trying to get people literally "addicted" to your products?

      It isn't a literal addiction. A literal, chemical, addiction causes physiological symptoms during withdrawal, including death.

      The side effects of not using a food delivery services are you have to go get your own food.

      • So addictions to gambling, computer gaming, facebook, or any non chemical compound, aren't literal addictions either?

        I guess the medical handbooks are all wrong then.

  • by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Wednesday January 17, 2024 @01:56PM (#64167765)

    Attractive people are seen as more reliable by other people. Therefore models are used in place of average people in marketing.

    The only news is that outrage clickbait machine is so completely out of things to be outraged about, this is now becoming problematised.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        Unless you're severely brain damaged, or suffered a crippling mutation during meiosis, you're just like the rest of us in terms of your cognitive systems.

        And by "us" I mean mammals. We all like to watch fit individuals of our species much more than unfit ones.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

            Attraction is what we call fitness. "Programming" is environment coding for different things based on current needs of reproduction. I.e. a fat woman in a famine is as attractive as a thin woman in an age of abundance. Because one of the primary markers of fitness in humans is ability to control impulses, while another is ability to secure resources.

            • Comment removed based on user account deletion
              • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                It's abstract while you're living in the age of extreme overabundance while being a part of said overabundance. Go into a forest to live off the clothes on your back and whatever tools you can make, and then come back and try to make the same argument.

                Fitness is a highly specific term in evolutionary biology.

    • by skam240 ( 789197 )

      Really? All you got out of that was the models part? My issue here is why are our colleges wasting their own limited resources on this crap.

  • That is all.

  • It looks like there are a lot of places where there are crosswalks with curbs on the end. These are accessibility issues anyways that the universities should be fixing anyways.

    Having the curb cuts helps the robots but also people in wheelchairs, people pushing carts, people with trouble getting over curbs. In general it's a bonus

  • by smoot123 ( 1027084 ) on Wednesday January 17, 2024 @02:11PM (#64167811)

    Let's leave aside the outrage at marketing using unrepresentative images. That's not news.

    I want to respond to the line from the fine article:

    The documents also highlight the extent to which food services has become a profit center for universities and their contractors.

    Why exactly is this bad? You might claim the University has a responsibility to ensure students can get food. I don't think you can derive from first principles that the University must actually run the food service. If the best way to ensure students are fed is with on-campus cafeterias, that's fine. If it's best accomplished by opening the campus to food vendors, that's fine too. Back in when I was on campus (when they served mammoth stroganoff), campus food service was pretty marginal and not exactly cheap. I would have been delighted to have the local restaurants package and deliver food. Even accounting for robot and profit overheads, there's a non-trivial possibility for-profit restaurants might deliver better food cheaper than the campus food service could.

    I'm also unclear why pointing out robots have problems with curbs is bad. So do wheelchairs and mobility scooters. Ever since the ADA passed, we've been beavering away adding ramps for accessibility reasons. That food delivery robots have issues just tells me we're not done with that task and should prioritize finishing it.

    • forcing students to buy meal plans is good with the unlimited student loans!

    • by djgl ( 6202552 )

      Over here the food provided in the canteens on campus is exceptionally cheap. Students basically pay only the cost of the ingredients.
      Back when I was in university I could buy a whole meal for the price of a McDonalds hamburger (the small one with a single patty).
      And these canteens take care to provide healthy food with lots of variety and options for vegetarians/vegans.
      There is no meal plan students have to sign up to in advance. You can decide spontaneously if you want to eat in the canteen and which of t

      • Over here the food provided in the canteens on campus is exceptionally cheap. Students basically pay only the cost of the ingredients.

        Well, I have to wonder whether there was a subsidy somewhere. Perhaps you didn't see the full cost of your meals.

        My campus the food was competitively priced but not crazy cheap. We purchased a number of points every semester. I think a point was a few dollars, breakfast was one point, lunch two, dinner three. The food was OK, also not great but not terrible. Fortunately, you could use meal points to buy beer and burgers at one of the outlets so that was pretty popular.

        This was all a long, long time ago. I h

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by Teun ( 17872 )
      That's what I noticed, they are looking for additional income on the backs of their students, depending on their main sources of income not something I would outright support.
      • That's what I noticed, they are looking for additional income on the backs of their students, depending on their main sources of income not something I would outright support.

        That wasn't clear to me from TFA. How exactly is the college making money off this? Near as I could tell they're spending money fixing sidewalks and curbs to let the robots do the delivery. Does the school get a cut of the delivery fee? And even if they do, isn't that fair to compensate for the road work?

        I'm kind of with you: I would prefer a college focus on educating students. One could make a reasonable argument they should get out of all the ancillary activities (e.g providing food, housing, health serv

  • by Murdoch5 ( 1563847 ) on Wednesday January 17, 2024 @02:11PM (#64167813) Homepage
    Let's ignore the fact that BMI is a joke, and I'm also ignoring people who are obese due to legit medical reasons, out of their control. Wanting “normal” people to be featured in your advertisements isn't something special or noteworthy. If you have the option between someone who looks like they escaped SeaWorld, and is so grotesquely obese they need oxygen, and a “fit” 20-year-old, who are you likely to pick?

    There is nothing normal, attractive, or sexy about being a land whale, and we need to stop promoting that “more fat and rolls = normal". If you can spend 10 hours a week stuffing your face with lard and butter, you can spend 10 hours a week at the gym, lifting weights and doing cardio (or some other form of adjusted exercise). Of course, working out 10 hours a week will also cause 10 hours a week of additional eating, but it's eating for a different reason.

    As for food delivery robots, well they have a purpose, and a place, but generally get off your ass and go eat. It's comical that the laziest, and most out of shape people, LOVE Uber Eats, and the food delivery services.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )

        On a global scale, it is rare. It's exceedingly rare, particularly in locations where you've got a healthy balance of healthy food to grains.

      • You're right, I should have put that in quotes, because it shouldn't be normal. I'm not scoffing at a person who has a little extra size or weight, I'm scoffing at the people who think needing 2+ seats on an airplane is reasonable, or who think hotel hallways should be widened because they discriminate against fat people.

        I understand what it's like being a large person, my shoulder base is ~61cm, I'm 184cm tall, and I weigh 136kg. The difference between my form, and someone whose 136kg from laziness an
    • by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )

      Lard and butter?

      If a person were to eat nothing but lard, butter, and other animal products, they'd slim right out. It's effectively impossible to get fat eating fat and meat, simply because you'll not be able to eat enough to get fat. Compared to carb heavy food, it's extremely nutritionally dense while at the same time having comparably minuscule calories.

      Otherwise, I agree with you completely about BMI and land whales. Go fucking move. It's not healthy, it's not a condition, it's a preference and a choic

      • I won't name anyone, but I know so many people who are 300, or 400+ lb, because of terrible, not questionable, diet and a lack of movement. I'm not suggesting everyone should try my workouts, here's one of my arm workouts for reference:

        Close Grip Bench — 2 Sets / 10 Reps — Warm up
        Close Grip Bench — 5 Sets / 10 Reps — Bulk Reps
        Close Grip Bench — 2 Sets / 5 Reps — Failure Reps
        Tricep Pushdown vbar — 2 Sets / 10 Reps — Warm up
        Tricep P
        • by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )

          I 'believe' several things about fitness, and health.

          1) It has to be enjoyable to keep people coming back unless they've hit personal crisis.
          2) You WILL lose weight if you eliminate or significantly reduce seed oils, HFCS and even most processed sugars (eg. don't replace soda with orange juice) from your diet and eat real food (eg. things which did not come in a bag or box) and move heavy things.
          3) Most of the people that big are that large because they triggered what amounts to hormonal poisoning: they're

          • To be fair, I'm 136kg (ca. 300 pounds) at 184cm (ca. 72 inches), almost everyone who knows me thinks I'm a “beast”, but that's due to muscle and size, not because I'm extremely overweight. Honestly, if you want an easy “cheat” way to eat better:

            1. Drink sugar-free! — Honestly, this can lead to tons of weight loss.
            2. Buy kids lunch food from the store, with health labels, it's honesty balanced (usually), and good for you, so you can have “snacks”.
            3. Eggs and
            • by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )

              Yeah, that weight at that height is an atypically large man.

              I'm probably a bit older than you, and I intermittently fast. 200lb, 6'2" (very skinny, was about 150lb until my late 30s).

              * eat dozen eggs + bacon for 'breakfast' around 11
              * lots of meat for supper with non-cruciferous veggies
              * coffee with heavy cream, usually
              * we get those carbonated flavored tonic waters
              * I will sometimes eat my kids snacks.

              I don't particularly want to be larger, I don't want eating to be a chore (I don't particularly enjoy it)

              • That diet is simple and fine, and it will work. I cut back on my overall egg intake, but I used to eat 12+ eggs a day, to the point we bought 30 packs because I could burn two of them a week without effort. I'm 36 :) - Cheers!
    • If you can spend 10 hours a week stuffing your face with lard and butter, you can spend 10 hours a week at the gym, lifting weights and doing cardio (or some other form of adjusted exercise). Of course, working out 10 hours a week will also cause 10 hours a week of additional eating, but it's eating for a different reason.

      My crossfit coach often repeats the platitude: Abs are made in the kitchen (meaning it's much easier to restrict calories via diet than it is to burn them via exercise).

      I saw a dietician

      • Sleep Hygiene is very important! Even if you're not trying to lose weight, or get in shape, you should improve your Sleep Hygiene. You're really better off not overthinking or over planning your diet, stick to eggs, bacon, rice, veg, red meat, pork, chicken and basic foods. Also, go reasonably sugar-free, so if you like soda (Pepsi, Coke, A&W), get the diet versions because that sugar reduction will make a MAJOR change.
  • by xack ( 5304745 ) on Wednesday January 17, 2024 @02:20PM (#64167845)
    Where they used to show physically strong cowboys and in modern adverts show young cool vapers. Also why fossil fuel companies show windmills in their adverts.
  • by wakeboarder ( 2695839 ) on Wednesday January 17, 2024 @02:21PM (#64167849)
    You can do better slashdot
    • How much do you think the anti-food-robot faction pays to put this up on Slashdot? Are they chasing after 30 comments and the attention of a bunch of disgruntled low-level IT employees near retirement?

      Slashdot makes no sense as a business, it's only still around because it's owned by an eccentric rich man who doesn't really care about profits.

    • These "omg slashvertisement" posts are getting tiring. If this is an advert it seems to do a great job of naming neither the university nor the robot delivery product. At the same time it seems to be mentioning multiple different universities generically, while also doing its best to shit on the idea and execution of delivery robots.

      Just WTF are you suggesting it's advertising?

      • As the article suggests "Starship delivery robots are currently semiautonomously performing the critical... Across 32 universities", there is a link to the website of the delivery service: https://www.starship.xyz/starship-food-delivery-app/?ref=404media.co in the article.

        It is blatantly obvious that this is an advert/promotion. Please don't come down on people, be a nicer person.
  • I work on a university campus, and pretty much *everything* you see posted anywhere only uses pictures of attractive, happy, "healthy-looking BMI" college-age students. They're certainly not providing a representative sample of the actual students I see walking around.

    Why should these silly food delivery companies be singled out for doing the same thing as everyone else?

  • by dfghjk ( 711126 ) on Wednesday January 17, 2024 @02:49PM (#64167943)

    "These highly specific instructions show how universities around the country are going to extreme lengths..."

    An absolute lie. The emails are from the company to the school, so they CANNOT show anything about what the school is doing. Furthermore, the emails are NOT "highly specific" and there is nothing suggestive about any "extreme lengths".

    A company says that ads should feature actors who are appropriate in age and are not fat. Wow, like that's never been said before. Imagine that a company would want its ads to appeal to its customers.

    The "extreme lengths" here are the authors lying to push a narrative that a school conspires to commit evil, apparently because of fat shaming. It's not news to fat or ugly people, it's in the messaging we all receive every day.

  • I'm surprised the universities don't put minimum height restrictions on their students. I hear we've been groomed to accept tallness as a synonym for competence, it would boost their post-graduation employment stats.
  • It's a terrible stat. It's not designed to be used for individuals, only populations. Even the guy who invented it (for population studies) knew there were far too many variables to use such a simplistic tool to get any meaningful understanding of a person's health.

    I was once, due to circumstances beyond my control, 30 pounds underweight. I looked like a skeleton, and most of my friends were seriously worried about my health. But because of my build, my BMI was "normal". My "normal" weight is right at

    • Actually it's the *miscalculation* of BMI that causes the problems.
      It's supposed to be weight divided by height to the 2.4th-2.7th power. But that requires using logarithms to calculate.
      Much simpler to square the height (H*H). This is what US Medicare uses for its BMI standard.
      And this is what the standard the US Military uses (copy-pasted from Medicare).

      Result: tall people usually listed up as overweight, short people as underweight.

    • Worse, it keeps professionals from properly understanding their patient's health.

      I am borderline obese by BMI, but I have barely ever had a provider contemplate it in any discussions or diagnoses (even a couple times where it was likely a controllable contributing factor). The couple times they had, it was in the context of something I brought up.

    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      It works pretty well to get a bunch of hot but not too hot ad models.

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