Want to Eat Less? Augmented Reality Glasses Could Help

If you’re like me and can’t manage to open up a fresh box of Oreos without snatching an entire row’s worth of cookies, this story is for you. We’ve already seen some of what Google could offer with its “Project Glass” augmented reality (AR) glasses, such as being able to scan food at the supermarket for nutritional information or interact with the Internet, but this latest use is definitely the most mind-manipulating.

The idea that the size and shape of your portion, plate or glass can affect your perception of food intake has been debated for some time. Just a few months ago, it was deemed that fluted glasses can encourage faster beer drinking versus ordinary ones. In a similar vein, what if snack food or meal portions could be scaled up or down?

That’s the idea that some folks at the University of Tokyo are playing around with. Their research employed the use of AR glasses similar to Google’s Project Glass, and were configured to increase or decrease the physical size of the food portion. It was discovered that when a simple Oreo cookie was increased in physical size by 50%, people ate 10% less. Counter to this, scaling it down to 66% of its original size upped intake by 15%.

I don’t discredit the idea behind how food portion sizes can toy with your brain, but this math leads me to believe that those who ate less, regularly eat 9 cookies, and those who upped their intake ate 7.5, leaving half of a cookie behind. What I’m trying to say is, if people in Japan can take an entire row of Oreos from the pack and it seem normal, that’s enough for me.