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Eating is one of the most multisensory experiences in everyday life. All of our five senses (i.e. taste, smell, vision, hearing and touch) are involved. We first eat with our eyes, we can smell the food before we taste it, and then experience its textures and flavours in our mouth. However, the experience does not stop there. The sounds that come both from the environment in which we are immersed in while eating and our interactions with the food (e.g. chewing) and the utensils we use to eat further influence our eating experiences. In all that, digital technology plays an increasingly important role, especially in using emerging immersive technologies such as Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR). Research on cross-model effects and the digitalisation of the chemical senses has enabled a range of investigations into the design of multisensory Human-Food Interactions (HFI).

In summary, our eating experiences are influenced by more than just the taste of food itself. Factors such as the cutlery we use, the ambient sounds in our surroundings, and even the colours of our environment can shape our perception of taste. We see consistent evidence of this phenomenon in the real world, but what about in Virtual Reality (VR), where the environment is bound only by our imagination?

In one of our research studies, participants tasted different samples of foods, categorised as either sweet or neutral, in a room illuminated with red, blue, or natural light. Although we hypothesised that food would taste sweeter in the red room and less sweet in the blue room, our findings provided only limited support for the idea that digital environments impact our taste perception. We are further investigating why the effects observed in real-world studies might not translate directly to the digital realm, and if they do, how can we create novel, immersive HFI experiences along the reality-virtuality continuum. 

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