Smell-e Technology | Rachelle de Vries | TEDxBreda

Smell-e Technology: Harnessing the power of food smells to unlock the full potential of VR technology

We make numerous decisions everyday about what to eat. Many of our food choices are made in sensory-rich environments, such as supermarkets, that trigger multiple senses (e.g. sight and smell), especially towards unhealthy foods. This is why eating a healthy diet can be difficult, even if someone wants to eat healthily. The global rise in overweight and obesity rates clearly reflects this struggle.

To better understand the forces behind our food choices – and specifically of the drivers of healthy food choices – we can use virtual reality (VR) technology to simulate real-world food environments and study how people make food decisions in a highly naturalistic way. However, people's responses to virtual foods are shown to be weaker than their responses to real-life foods, making research into this topic generally less valid. We argue that this is because a crucial component has been missing from current virtual experiences: the sense of smell.

Along with a team of international scientists and industry partner specialized in making cutting-edge “smelly” devices, Rachelle is embarking on a game-changing mission to develop and validate an innovative multisensory VR food environment that harnesses the power of smell, in order to better understand how to empower individuals to make healthier food choices. Rachelle de Vries is a postdoctoral researcher at Tilburg University, and she is fascinated by the basic psychological processes governing why we eat what we eat, and differences between individuals in these processes. She is passionate about translating this knowledge into novel ways to help individuals make healthier food choices – especially
within the “obesogenic” calorie-rich food landscape that we currently find ourselves in.

Her research work has been highlighted by renowned international media outlets such as The New York Times and Scientific American. She has also recently appeared as a guest expert on BBC’s CrowdScience episode on why we crave unhealthy foods. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

Видео Smell-e Technology | Rachelle de Vries | TEDxBreda канала TEDx Talks