As I raise the fork to my mouth to deliver another Brussel sprout, it starts to violently vibrate, and I almost drop it on the table. The hostess eyes me suspiciously.

The devil fork is called the HAPIfork, but I immediately slip into calling it the “food-shaming fork,” and the name sticks. The moniker isn’t really fair — the fork doesn’t actually take into account what type of food you’re eating. Instead, it measures how quickly you eat, and zaps you with a Pavlovian vibration if you don’t take enough time between bites. It’s supposed to train you to eat slower, which studies have shown can help you feel fuller sooner, thus leading to weight loss. (This effect generally takes about 20 minutes.)

I Ate With a Food-Shaming Fork for a Week – Jessica Roy, NY Mag (1 September 2014)

It’s a very big fork, like a sonic screwdriver with prongs on the end. So there’s also the embarrassment factor of being seen with this, let alone with it, well, um, vibrating like that.

Read Roy’s full feature for how the week went and how the weak survive.