Using social media to change eating habits without conscious effort

Abstract

Healthy eating habits are important for modern people; however, sustaining these habits is often difficult because it requires a strong will. In this paper, we propose a social media system, Yumlog, that enables people to begin eating meals that are more healthful naturally and without conscious effort. Using the proposed system, users share information on their meals and evaluate the yumminess and healthfulness of each other's meals. The satisfaction of a user with a meal increases with others' positive evaluations. In behavioral science, this effect is called expectation assimilation. In addition, Yumlog modifies others' evaluations, displaying evaluations of healthfulness as those of yumminess to the user consuming the meal. Thus, users tend to eat more foods that are evaluated as healthful foods and thereby, improve their eating habits without noticing it. We demonstrate the potential of the proposed system through user studies.