eat2pic: Food-tech Design as a Healthy Nudge with Smart Chopsticks and Canvas

In this paper, we introduce a food-tech design as a healthy nudge called eat2pic that encourages people to slow down their eating pace and encourage healthier eating habits. The eat2pic system is composed of a sensor-equipped chopstick (one of a pair) and components that use context-aware digital canvases. The eat2pic system achieves (1) automatic tracking of what and how fast the user consumed each mouthful of food, (2) real-time visual feedback that indicates good or bad eating behavior. The key concept of eat2pic involves extending the relationship between humans and paintings in order to establish a closed-loop in which daily eating behavior is reflected in pictures on the canvas near us and feedback from the canvas leads our lifestyles towards healthier diets. The eat2pic system provides a novel experience in which users can come to see eating as a playful task that involves coloring landscape pictures, and not simply taking nutrition into their bodies.