Food Mood Bra

The food mood bra for emotional eating makes us wonder why people think the folks at Microsoft (who came up with this) have lost their innovative edge. Who else could dream this up?

The people behind this breakthrough say that their device can detect stressful situations because its sensors are close to the heart. “It’s mostly women who are emotional overeaters, and it turns out that a bra is perfect for measuring EKG (electrocardiogram),” said Mary Czerwinski, a research manager at Microsoft.

Their idea is that this special bra can help women get in touch with the emotions that trigger emotional eating and learn new responses. They tried a version for men’s underwear, but it didn’t work so well. Weak signals from the heart were the problem. Who could have guessed?

Some other problems may get in the way, too. Apparently the battery only lasts four hours. How can it be that Microsoft can’t find a way to keep this device charged up?

But the real problem might be privacy. Would you want to risk NSA hacking into your bra?

We didn’t see this one coming.

Click here to read more in the Huffington Post and click here to read the study published in Proceedings of IEEE Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction (ACII 2013).

Purr-fect Bra, photograph © Patti Haskins / flickr

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