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Virtually enlarged food tricks Japanese dieters into eating less

Virtually enlarged food tricks Japanese dieters into eating less

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A team at Tokyo University has developed eyewear aimed to aid dieters by making food appear 50 percent larger than it really is.

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diet glasses
diet glasses

A team at the University of Tokyo has developed a pair of "glasses" aimed to aid dieters by making food appear up to 50 percent larger than it really is. The video eyewear processes the image to enlarge the food's appearance while maintaining the original size of the hand and surroundings. The idea is that tricking the wearer into believing that they've eaten more than they really have will give them a greater feeling of "fullness."

The stats appear to bear this out, at least slightly: according to the Yomiuri Shinbun, a test group of 12 men and women ate 9.3 percent less cookies than normal when shown the 50 percent enlarged image, but 15 percent more when the glasses were set to reduce the cookies' size by 33 percent. Japan isn't a nation known for having an obesity problem, but perhaps that's outweighed by a love of unique technology.