In 2013, over 3 billion passengers took to the skies. As airlines aim to make flying as simple as taking the train, could everything people would normally associate with air travel – endless queues, bad food, cramped, uncomfortable seats – be about to change for the better?

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.

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.

Nobody enjoys in-flight food, with science suggesting that factors like altitude, dry airspace and the level of noise on a plane are all part of the problem. Cathay Pacific has taken all these factors into account to create Betsy Beer – a craft beer brewed to taste good at 30,000 feet.