Big Brother's cafe watches you eat

Scientists note habits to guide commercial choices

Arthur Max | The Associated Press

10/3/2008 - 10/4/08

WAGENINGEN, Netherlands — At the university cafeteria, women linger longer than men over their lunch decisions. Given a choice, they tend to opt for meat labeled "animal friendly," while men likely will 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 fresh juices?

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

"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's not true; 80 percent of our decisions are made subconsciously, he said, citing U.S. studies.

Research on consumer behavior has been around since marketing began. Cornell University professor Brian Wansink has published popular works in the U.S. on how to fight obesity through food psychology, and runs a lab designed to look like a kitchen on the Cornell campus. McDonald's has done confidential studies on its own customers.

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 United States is outside the home.

Companies are interested, of course, but so are public facilities. Schools want to know how to deal with young teenagers who throw away home-prepared food and lunch on potato chips and Coke instead.