Sweetening the experience: How designed immersive multisensory environments modify yogurt taste and mouthfeel perception

Immersive multisensory environments offer new opportunities to modulate food perception through integrating visual and auditory elements. While previous research has demonstrated crossmodal influences on taste, little is known about how they interact with both taste and mouthfeel in foods with varying sweetness levels. This research investigated how combinations of visual and auditory cues influence taste and mouthfeel perception in immersive contexts. Two experiments explored crossmodal effects in designed environments that varied in lighting colour and music sound. The first study examined associations between immersive environments differing in visual and auditory features and perceived sensory attributes related to taste and mouthfeel descriptors. Results showed consistent crossmodal mappings: warm colours, rounded forms, and legato music were associated with sweetness and smoothness, whereas cool hues, angular shapes, and staccato music sounds were linked to sourness and thinness. The second study tested whether these designed environments affected yogurt evaluation with two sugar levels (6% and 9%). Participants rated yogurts for taste and mouthfeel attributes across three validated environments and one control condition. Results revealed a modest but statistically significant increase in perceived sweetness (approximately 15–16%) for the lower-sugar yogurt in the sweet-congruent environment relative to the control condition. Additionally, the thickness-congruent scene increased creaminess and sliminess perception, while the sour scene elevated thin and watery sensations. These findings highlight the potential of immersive multisensory environments to modulate sensory experiences in food consumption.