Mealody : Music Changing The Way We Eat

Mealody : Music Changing The Way We Eat

Mealody : Music Changing The Way We Eat

Lifestyle diseases such as type2 diabetes and obesity are on the rise every year with over 4 million people dying each year as a result of being overweight or obese. One of the main causes comes from unhealthy food we eat. Whenever we try to control an intake of unhealthy food, our body responds to make us crave them more and end up overeating. This is a vicious circle of dieting.

At the beginning, this project was in collaboration with Professor Charles Spence from Cross Modal Perception Research Lab, Department of Experimental Psychology at University of Oxford and partners with a diabetes support group in London. Based on multi-sensory perception research and experiment indicates that slow tempo and soothing music could be a cue to help us taste the flavour more, eat more slowly with more satiety and thus consume less. So, we still can eat what we want in a smaller amount. After that, I conducted a virtual experiment to find a link between musical cues and our eating habits from 3 types of users groups (diabetics, obese people and health influencers). In the experiment, participants eat different kinds of food, snacks and beverages with certain music genres. The result is aligned with Spence’s scientific research, showing that slow tempo and soothing music can affect people’s eating behaviour, enhance taste perception and reduce food consumption rate.

From insights to the solution, Mealody presents a connected system through real-time music algorithm with smart devices. In this service, you start by setting up your own music preference on Mealody app then, your profile will be synced with a sensing ring through a music algorithm. When you have your meals, the ring can detect and display nutritional elements from your food, helping you make better eating decisions. Then, it connects with a smart speaker to play soothing music based on your musical preference that perfectly matches with your food. In this relaxing musical vibe, you’ll taste it more, eat more slowly with more satiety and ultimately consume less.


In conclusion, this project aims to tackle a complex and relevant issue of lifestyle diseases by suggesting a joyful solution to help people enjoy their meals while controlling their diets. By integrating musical stimuli into a connected system of smart devices, Mealody not only helps people with lifestyle diseases but it also slightly changes everyone’s eating habits in a non-invasive, intuitive and pleasant way. Ultimately, Mealody can encourage a healthier eating lifestyle and change our perception of food with more mindfulness in the long run. In the near future, Mealody can be our future healthcare and speculative lifestyle prescription service that helps us take care of ourselves through music and educate people about mindful eating in a pleasurable way.

Mealody proposes a four-part component design solution which is a generative music algorithm, an app to set up your musical preference, a sensing ring and smart speaker device. 

Generative music algorithm :
Mealody’s core is a real-time algorithm that  generates music to pair up with food from 3 factors which are listener’s favourite music preference, a slow beat of tempo and an ambience that is related to users’ food. This algorithm works as a centre among a mobile application, wearable device and audio speaker. For instance, users have a seafood pasta, the algorithm will match a music with preferred genres such as Jazz then, it will compose the music with slow & soothing tempo around 72 or less BPM  (Beat per Minute) and combine with ambient sound that related to pasta seafood such as outdoor seaside Cafe sound in Brighton, UK and beach white noise. Finally, the algorithm will generate a “Brighton Beach Jazz”  soundtrack which not only intelligently matches with their music taste but also provides a soothing beat as a cue to eat more slowly and help them eat less food. 

Mealody App :
The user journey starts with an app to get to know users’ musical preference by creating individuals’ musical profiles. The main part of this app is an onboarding with a series of questions about individuals’ music taste and memories such as favourite genres, ambiences, memorable places, meals or even seasons. Moreover, this app can encourage you to eat healthier by suggesting certain kinds of music and healthy menus. 

Sensing ring :
Mealody presents a sensing ring which works as an IOT connector between the music algorithm, musical profile and what people eat.The element of a ring is combined with an AI recognition camera to analyse food that they eat in real time and health sensors. By using an AI recognition camera, the ring can detect and display nutrition facts for each component of a meal such as level of fat, sugar or carbohydrate in real time, helping people make better eating decisions. The food data will be synced into an audio speaker in order to match the right music from users’ preference and food they have. This ring also consists of a real-time blood glucose level sensor by using Radio frequency (RF)/microwave sensing techniques and a Near Infrared sensor (NIR) that can be used to detect cholesterol level. This helps users better track and manage their diets while eating and after meals. The feedback will be displayed on the screen at the top of the ring. This ring is created as a piece of jewellery which is made of brass as a body of the ring and the screen is made of LED screen to display the feedback. 

Smart speaker device :
After the system is provided with completed data from the ring and musical profile, the algorithm in the speaker will immediately compose the soundtrack and play the music afterwards. The speaker is made of a plastic covering white fabric mesh and a birch wood as a material for the interface which is perfect to put on your dining table. The wooden interface is on the top of the speaker, uniquely, users can adjust the bandwidth of music tempo by themselves in case they want a more uplifting beat from the given soothing soundtrack. For instance, the speaker plays chilling jazz, they can adjust the tempo so they get mellow jazz-hip hop. On the top of the speaker as a docking station, there is a wireless charger for the ring that users can take the ring off and keep it back for recharging batteries.

https://vimeo.com/556243197

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A Better Life, A Better World, this slogan does share the same value and passion in my design. Since my project, Mealody aims to tackle the global complex and relevant issue of lifestyle illness such as type 2 diabetes and obesity to create a healthier eating lifestyle for all human-beings in the world. I strongly believe that my project has a promising potential for the Panasonic Special prize this year.

Predominantly, Mealody inspires the world to change the way we eat. Lifestyle diseases such as diabetes and obesity are on the rise. The issue has grown to epidemic proportions, with over 4 million people dying each year as a result of being overweight or obese. The vicious circle of eating in diabetics and obese people who have a huge appetite while they need to be cautious about the amount of unhealthy food. When they control their diets due to their health condition, they gradually fall into the dieting cycle. They swing between being strict to food and falling off the wagon to binge eating all restricted foods. Over-eating and binge eating are the body’s natural responses to starvation and is what the body does to protect itself. This brings a low-self esteem, guilty and unpleasant meal time. All of these drive me to seek for potential solutions that change their eating behaviours. 

From inspiration to exploration for changes, with scientific research and design-led approach, I discovered that food intake and an individual’s eating behaviour in general could be influenced by external factors such as colour, lighting and music. As confirmed by research data that human-being are synced with the beat of music, slow tempo and music genres such as classical can trigger people to taste the flavour more, eat slowly yet feel more satiated and reduce the food consumption rate with higher satisfaction in relaxing musical vibes. Considering the current belief that slower eating with more satiety and longer meal duration results in less food being consumed, eating the same amount of food within a longer timeframe presents obvious health benefits. This shows a new opportunity that music can be a trigger to encourage healthy eating habits with mindfulness and pleasure.

On the top of that, Mealody brings this concept to life with a ground-breaking solution by creating a food and music pairing service to create a pleasurable immersive experience while controlling their amount of food. This can brings the joyfulness of the meal time back to the dull life of people with lifestyle illness with the advanced technology and human-centred design of a smart connected system with four complementary interventions of a music generative algorithm, musical profile application, wearable device and smart speaker device in order to help people consume less. By integrating musical stimuli with this intelligent algorithmic system, Mealody encourages a healthier eating lifestyle and changes individuals’ perception towards diets with more mindfulness. 

In conclusion, what Mealody does is to explore and speculate potential solutions that could build a probable future of healthier eating lifestyle in a more pleasant way. In the bigger picture, this is not only for diabetics and obese people, I hope my project will inspire all global consumers to rethink about eating behaviours, concern more about their health and start to do a little change, perhaps, try to pair up a certain kind of classical or jazz music with their food during the meal time.