In partnership with Sodexho, the Dutch University of Wageningen's opened a new €3 million research center-slash-restaurant, the "restaurant of the future," that is focused on the study of its patrons' eating habits by way of dozens of unobtrusive (but still totally creepy) cameras and close monitoring. Ultimately, these studies will "help the Center for Innovative Consumer Studies 'find out what influences people: colors, taste, personnel. We try to focus on one stimulus, like light,'said Rene Koster, head of the center, as overhead bulbs switched through green, red, orange and blue."

From a hidden control room, researchers maneuver the hidden cameras to zoom in and spy on diners and what and how they munch--everything from how someone walks with a tray of food, what food they choose to jam on, where they sit, and what they waste.

via all this chittahchattah