In her 2015 bookBowl + Spoon, food and wellness writer Sara Forte put the joy of one-pot eating centre-stage. And thanks to both foodie culture and design appreciation going mainstream, the crockery that food is eaten on is now becoming almost as important as the food itself.

As anyone who's ever caught the faintest whiff of freshly baked bread can tell you, our sense of smell is inextricably linked to our memories of food. So the Virtual Human Interaction Lab is experimenting by adding smell and touch to potential VR experiences.

When it comes to food, it’s all about flavour – right? Canvas8 spoke to Charles Spence, the psychologist behind ‘gastrophysics’, to discover howallsenses impact on how we taste and to find out how brands are using packaging, colour and sound to radically alter our flavour experiences.

In her 2016 bookFirst Bite, food writer Bee Wilson drew on research from food psychologists and neuroscientists to reveal how people’s food habits are shaped. Speaking with Canvas8, she explains the influence of family, memory, gender and love on the things we eat as children and adults.