Rye bread constitutes a major part of the Northern European cuisine and is known for its flavor versatility. Due to the large flavor difference between rye bread from Northern Europe and the United States, this study was designed to develop and evaluate a lexicon which acts as a tool for understanding the flavor profile of rye bread consumed in the United States and Northern Europe. A highly trained panel developed, defined, and referenced a lexicon with 28 flavor attributes using a consensus descriptive analysis method with 32 Northern European and U.S rye bread. The lexicon was tested with 18 representative samples. The data were analyzed using correlation analysis, principal component analysis, and cluster analysis. The results confirmed the high versatility in flavor among rye breads and revealed clear differences between Northern European rye breads and the U.S rye breads. Northen European rye bread flavor was spread over a wider flavor range than the U.S. products, and scored higher in sweet, overall grain, bran, and rye than U.S. rye breads. Practical applications The development of this lexicon for rye bread can help researchers to better understand the flavor profile of rye bread and support manufacturers in differentiating their products from competitors as well as improving existing products on the market.

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People are typically involved in diferent activities while eating, particularly when eating alone, such as watching television or playing games on their phones. Previous research in Human-Food Interaction (HFI) has primarily focused on studying people's motivation and analyzing of the media content watched while eating. However, their impact on human behavioral and cognitive processes, particularly favor perception and its attributes, remains underexplored. We present a user study to investigate the infuence of six types of videos, including mukbang -a new food video genre, on favor perceptions (taste sensations, liking, and emotions) while eating plain white rice. Our fndings revealed that participants perceived positive emotional changes and reported signifcant diferences in their augmented taste sensations (e.g., spicy and salty) with diferent food-based videos. Our fndings provided insights into using our approach to promote digital commensality and healthier eating (digital augmentation without altering the food), highlighting the scope for future research.

This paper presents THED, a wearable thermal display to perceive spatial thermal sensations within a virtual reality (VR) environment. THED consists of a wrist-worn thermal stimulation module and a control module utilizing Bluetooth TM communication to connect with the VR environment. To demonstrate THED, we have developed a VR environment showing a virtual campfire in a snowy climate where participants were able to experience the virtual campfire in different predetermined distances. We have conducted a user experiment to 1) determine the distance based perception of spatial thermal sensations in a VR setting (VR only), 2) determine the differences of thermal stimuli on participants' wrists (thermal only), and 3) evaluate the effects of combined thermal stimuli towards their expected spatial thermal stimuli (VR + thermal). Our primary aim of this study is to learn how humans spatially perceive thermal sensations on their hands (utilizing only one hand vs. both hands) when given a wrist-worn thermal source coupled with a virtual reality scenario. Our findings show that different thermal stimuli utilized by THED were able to provide thermal sensations in virtual reality that closely mirrored participants' expected thermal sensations in respective real world scenarios.

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