Japan 'Diet Glasses': How They Trick You to Eat Less

A unique pair of diet glasses have been invented in Japan to try and help weak-willed dieters, who lack self-control.

Researchers at the University of Tokyo have developed a pair of goggles that fool people into thinking they are eating a delicious large snack, instead of something plain and tasteless.

The glasses also make snacks appear larger than they are in reality, while keeping the person's hand the same size in an aim to deceive them into thinking they are eating a lot more than they actually are consuming.

Experiments performed on consumers found that the average participant consumed nearly 10 percent less with the glasses on, after the brain was fooled to think the portion was a larger size.

How to fool various senses or how to build on them using computers is very important in the study of virtual reality, Professor Michitaka Hirose told Agence France- Presse.

Researchers in the project also developed a meta cookie, which gives out a scent and appearance of a delicious rich chocolate or strawberry cookie, fooling consumers as they eat a plain biscuit.

Consumers have shown a 80 percent rate of being fooled, according to Hirose. Reality is in your mind, Hirose told the AFP.

Hirose explained that standard virtual reality equipment that caters for a particular complex sense is often bulky, but using more than one sense in this experiment was a way around the problem.

The University of Tokyo has no immediate plans to commercialize the glasses yet, but the device is currently being tested on people aspiring to lose weight, the AFP reported.