The Right Cup

If you are worried about how just sweet your foods are, this innovation might be a magic bullet.

It’s called The Right Cup, and is one of the most successful Indiegogo campaigns with over 1,800 people investing more than $100,000 within 2 weeks and coming to a store near you this coming April. The cup actually contains aromas like: orange, mixed berry, apple and lemon-lime. The inventor, Issac Lavi told Food Navigator that he created the cup “as an answer to the obesity problem. He believes a major culprit is the vast amounts of sugars American consume - on average 42 gallons of sweetened beverages alone. His idea is simple. The cups sweet aromas trigger your brain in thinking that what you are drinking is sweet - even plain water. He explains that 80% of flavor actually comes from our sense of smell. He uses FDA approved, food-grade aromatic flavors to infuse the cups which are also color-coded to correspond with the aroma flavor. 

Does it work? On his tests with kids in kindergarten his observational data found that the kids, whose cups were filled with plain water, actually asked for more “juice” when they finished drinking. While the concept of “fooling” our brain to get us to consume healthier offerings is not a new one, it is clear that research like this, and that coming out of Cornell’s Food & Brand Lab clearly points to external factors that may help us in combatting poor eating habits and poor choices.