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Big Brother’s cafe watches as you eat

WAGENINGEN: At the university cafeteria, women linger longer than men over their lunch decisions. Given a choice, they tend to opt for meat labelled “animal friendly,” while men will possibly go for a new product.

Cameras are watching them. From inside a control room, monitors record the customers’ movements, hesitations, facial expressions, posture, weight, even their eating habits.

It gives the scientists plenty to chew over. They study the influences on eating, how products can be made more appealing, and how to direct consumers to specific — perhaps healthier — choices.

Does it matter if the cheese slices are wrapped in plastic? If the bread is presented as a loaf or sliced up? Whether the salad is on a red table or a blue one? Whether the soft drinks are by the entrance or by the checkout? Or where they stand in relation to juices?

The $4.5 million Restaurant of the Future is run by scientists of Wageningen University and Research Centre here in the Netherlands, working with Sodexo, an international catering firm, and the Noldus software company, to answer questions from the food industry and behaviourists.

“We think of ourselves as rational beings, always making the best choice,” says Rene Koster, director of the Restaurant of the Future Foundation. But that is not true; 80 per cent of our decisions are made subconsciously, he said, citing U.S. studies.

Research on consumer behaviour has been around since marketing began. But with its spy machines, databases and battery of analysts, the Wageningen project, with 42 companies participating, is meant to take the study of eating to a level approaching rocket science.

Knowing how to subtly guide choices could have a huge commercial impact. About half of all food consumed in the U.S. is outside the home. That figure shoots up to 68 per cent in Japan. — AP

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