Interactions between Human, Computer and Food

Technology is always evolving; new discoveries have been more specific and deeper levels of interaction between the real and the virtual worlds have been reached. Nowadays, people are increasingly interested in this immersion of sensations and feelings that technology can provide. Besides being fundamental to life, the act of eating brings people together, causing various interactions between them. Eating brings unique sensations that involve different emotions and feelings in people, which can be leveraged to create greater experiences with the use of human-computer interactions. Technology has brought the virtual world closer to the real world in order to enhance culinary experiences, either by creating digital foods or enhancing real ones, by developing devices and programs that are capable of invoking or measuring sensations, with immersion tests where a participant is inserted into a controlled virtual environment closely resembling the real environment, and by measuring and evaluating emotions/responses. This review presents the relationships between humans, computers and food, called human-food interactions, focusing on the use of computational technologies, exploration of human senses, and digital interactions in food experience design, showing the future challenges that need to be overcome.