Microsoft Developed a Bra to Fight Obesity of Women

Sometimes you look at the output of Microsoft and you invariably ask yourself whether they are joking. Just think of the Zune, their SmartWatch or whatever it was called, or their push to abolish ownership for video games with their Xbox One console. The other day, though, I was made aware not of a product that made me pinch myself, but a research paper with the title, "Food and Mood: Just-in-Time Support for Emotional Eating."

In a nutshell, the researchers explored how to detect that someone was about to eat when it wasn't physiologically necessary, and how to keep them from doing so. The article makes for some rather amusing reading, because the researchers put sensors into a bra that would monitor the emotional state of the woman wearing it:

You just can't make that up!


In the paper the term "emotional eating" is used to describe any act of food intake that is not physiologically required. I guess that sounds much more politically correct than "gluttony". I mean, if someone said to Jennifer, "It seems that you are habitually engaging in acts of emotional eating.", she might think that everything is fine. Emotions are the gold standard of female behavior after all. Stay on course, sister! Just consider the "doublethink" you'd have to engage were you to use phrases like that instead of, "Geez, it seems she's about to stuff her face again --- as if she wasn't fat enough already." Nope, it's just "emotional eating". Nothing to worry about.

The hypothesis was that women seem to wolf down all kinds of unhealthy food to feel less depressed better about themselves. You'd really have to commend Microsoft that they not only diagnosed the problem of lacking will-power, but suggested a solution as well. But how does it work? It's quite simple, actually. Those sensors monitor the stress levels of the woman, and if they reach a certain level, apparently people (women) reflexively grab the nearest chocolate bar. Many men complain how unpredictable the behavior of their women is, but apparently this is one area where there is some certainty.

• Step 1: Can't handle your shit.
• Step 2: Get stressed out.
• Step 3: Emotional eating (yay!)

That doesn't seem to make a lot of sense but if I was a woman I could probably "feel" that this was a perfectly plausible behavioral pattern.

Okay, so the little beeper figures out that the female it is monitoring is about to freak out because she realizes she doesn't fit into last year's clothes anymore. To prevent things from getting worse, she might now interact with an app on her phone that is also described in the Microsoft paper. Look at this:

Did the 1st of April by any chance arrive early?

After getting stressed, she then has to breathe deeply. How well did this work? Well, the researchers write that they were able to detect with an accuracy of about 75 % when a woman was entering a heightened emotional state. However, just doing breathing exercises wasn't enough. The women instead would have "personalized interventions" to keep them from eating.

If you thought that a lot of academic research serves no practical purpose, then I hope that this article has helped you change your mind. There is some life-changing work happening out there. The authors even indicate that they have plans to develop devices for men, too. Probably is has to be a cup you'd have to put on the tip of your cock.

By the way, for the study, the researchers were enlisting women who work in their lab. Who knows, maybe they just wanted to see the boobs of their interns.

So, what do you think? Was this real research or did those guys just play a prank on those poor women? Further: do you also "eat emotionally"? (I don't.)