Could A Bacon-Scented Arm Patch Quell Meat Cravings?

In partnership with plant-based food company Strong Roots, Professor Charles Spence of Oxford University has invented scratch and sniff stickers for your food cravings.

In addition to his duties as a professor of experimental psychology, Spence is the author of Gastrophysics: The New Science of Eating, and developed the patch to manipulate the wearer's sensory perception, since the senses of smell and taste are entwined. The theory: By taking a big whiff of bacon whenever they're in the mood to chomp down on some juicy, succulent meat, the wearer will find themselves satiated by the smell of an artificial bacon sticker alone, and will more easily adjust to a plant-based diet without carnivorous cravings derailing their efforts.

"Our sense of smell is strongly connected to our ability to taste, therefore experiencing food related cues such as smelling a bacon aroma can lead us to imagine the act of eating that food," said Spence to The Telegraph. "Imagine eating enough bacon and you might find yourself sated."

The patches are produced by Strong Roots, which is currently testing them with a small sample of people who are trying to adapt to vegetarian diets. If trials are successful the company plans to bring them to market, and it's clear that Strong Roots is pretty confident that trials will be successful, because they've already signed a celebrity spokesperson: a British boxer named Tommy Fury who was a runner-up on the British reality show Love Island. This whole damn thing feels like a gigantic missed steak.