'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.
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.
News? (Score:3)
Is this supposed to be controversial? Who cares.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
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)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:2)
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 :-)
Re: (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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 do a bit at least (Score:2)
I know I care, at least a bit. Why are college campus' spending their own resources to redesign infrastructure to accommodate this stuff?
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: News? (Score:2)
so can't use the football team in your marketing? (Score:2)
so can't use the football team in your marketing?
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
And the kicker.
Re: (Score:2)
Thank you. Missed them. Should also include the punter.
The place kicker (Score:2)
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.
Is that all capitalism is anymore? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
The drug war was started by Nixon (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:2)
Right and that's not what your post is doing at all.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Its EXACTLY what it is. Its dropping up an unsubstantiated but popular conspiracy into a casual conversation, thereby spreading it at the same time using it color a marketing campaign as some more nefarious than it is.
Its very clearly propaganda. Really it does not bother my it how people talk. What bothers me is how you, left-tards will club anyone you don't like for those rhetorical games and demand they be censored; then turn around and do it yourself or defend someone who is when they are playing for y
Re: (Score:2)
Love your ultra partisan blinders! If only the left wing didnt exist, you would never have problems again, right?
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The legal justification for its illegality is that those methodologies are harmful unto those it involves.
No, the legal justification for its illegality is that the substance is harmful.
As ist fast food.
Were you born this stupid, or did you take lessons?
Thanks, I'll return that question.
Re: (Score:2)
The legal justification for its illegality is that those methodologies are harmful unto those it involves.
No, the legal justification for its illegality is that the substance is harmful.
As ist fast food.
But that's not illegal.
Since you're reduced to trying (and failing) to change the subject, you've admitted I'm right, and that you're full of shit, and you know it.
Loser.
Re: (Score:2)
The legal justification for its illegality is that those methodologies are harmful unto those it involves.
No, the legal justification for its illegality is that the substance is harmful.
As ist fast food.
But that's not illegal.
But that was your whole reasoning why other drugs are illegal. So if it's harmful, it should be illegal, right?
And that's your circular reasoning.
Since you're reduced to trying (and failing) to change the subject, you've admitted I'm right, and that you're full of shit, and you know it.
Loser.
Oh how I missed this friendly people on the net...
Re: (Score:2)
Now you're reduced to lying.
You can stop admitting I'm right. Everybody already knows.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Hyperbole (Score:3)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
*always has been* meme (Score:2)
n/t
What's new? (Score:3)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Expressions of fitness are. Fitness itself is not, because fitness indicates that you're fit for the environment.
Your take is the "tail is wagging the dog" conceptualized. It does not. Dog wags the tail.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Postmodernist take: "lens based on human perception...".
Reality: fitness is not a lens, nor does it relate to human perception in any way. Fitness is an evolutionary theory concept. Fitness is measured by long term lineage survival.
The only part where "human perception" is involved in the process is in the acceptance of basic foundation of the theory of science. That human can reliably observe things and that human that observes exists.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
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.
NO FATTIES! (Score:2)
That is all.
Accessibility Issues Fixed (Score:2)
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
Why is "profit center" bad? (Score:3)
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.
forceing students to buy meal plans is good with l (Score:2)
forcing students to buy meal plans is good with the unlimited student loans!
Re: (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:2)
It still is true. The most expensive meal at my old university this Thursday costs €4,20 for students. And this is with meat. The three vegan menus cost less.
Re: (Score:2)
...and Uber will deliver just about anything anywhere, undercutting the need to have an overpriced option on-campus.
Yeah, exactly my point. If local restaurants and UberEats can deliver better food cheaper than the traditional food service, well what's not to like? Even if the school takes a licensing cut, if it still works out better and cheaper that's a win. And I'm firmly of the opinion that competing restaurants will be much more efficient than a traditional food service with a five-year contract and no competition.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
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
So they don't want SeaWorld Exhibits? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:2)
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)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Cardio is useless if you don't have any strength.
Cardio does very little for resting metabolism, which is one of the biggest factors in how many calories you burn. You have to load muscles to failure to get that benefit: a hard workout will burn more calories in repair and recovery than the workout itself.
Cardio never saved anyone from heart attack or lengthened their life. General strength and fitness does every day.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:2)
Straight out of the tobacco company playbook (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Except in this case it's food.
Re: (Score:2)
Not really. This has nothing to do with tobacco. This is marketing 101 stuff and long predates what tobacco was doing.
This is an ad (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
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?
Re: (Score:2)
It is blatantly obvious that this is an advert/promotion. Please don't come down on people, be a nicer person.
My default /. reaction anymore - "Oh Good Grief" (Score:2)
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?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Or maybe don't change anything because even the unattractive, unhealthy students don't want to see unhealthy people in ads.
Re: (Score:2)
Picturing you after Lucy pulls the football again:
https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.c... [tapatalk-cdn.com]
https://www.peanuts.com/sites/... [peanuts.com]
emails do no such thing (Score:5, Insightful)
"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.
6' 4" (Score:2)
Please, stop using BMI. (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Doesn't matter. It's not appropriate for individuals.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
It works pretty well to get a bunch of hot but not too hot ad models.