The simple act of digitally expanding the size of your food portions tricks the surprisingly stupid human brain into thinking it’s eaten more than it actually has, which gives Google Glass the unlikely selling point of being an ace dieting tool for the bigger-boned tech enthusiast.

The trick, developed by researchers from the University of Tokyo, uses AR glasses to digitally increase the size of food held in the hand in real time. This simple method found that when food sizes were enhanced by 1.5 times, actual consumption fell by around 10 per cent, as some sort of mental placebo effect convinced the brain it had stuffed a larger amount of food into the mouth hole below it. And smaller portions made test subjects eat more.

The demonstration video shows how the software does a clever job of super-sizing a biscuit, automatically adapting the position of the hand slightly to compensate and maintain a relatively realistic image to fool the poor old brain. [DigInfo via Daily Mail]