SOL 01 — HOW DO YOU WANT TO FEEL?

We usually begin with a simple question:

What do you want to eat?

But what if we started somewhere else?

How do you want to feel?

Curious?

Comforted?

Energised?

Connected?

Surprised?

Transported somewhere else?

Food is nutrition. But our experience of food is more than nutrients — and even more than taste.

We see it.

We smell it.

We touch it.

We hear it.

We anticipate it.

And sometimes, a smell, flavour or texture can suddenly transport us to another time, another place, or another moment in our lives.

Welcome to ExoGen Beyond Taste.

A place where we explore food not only as something we consume, but as something we experience.

TASTE ISN'T ONLY ON YOUR TONGUE

What we call flavour is a multisensory experience.

Our brain combines information from taste, smell, vision, touch and sound — together with what we expect to experience.

The Oxford Crossmodal Research Laboratory has spent years exploring how these senses interact.

Even the sound surrounding food can matter. Research has shown, for example, that sound can influence how crunchy or crispy something seems, while music and soundscapes can interact with our perception of flavour.

So perhaps the experience of eating begins long before food reaches our tongue.

And continues long after.

FROM ASTROPHYSICS TO GASTROPHYSICS

You probably know ASTROPHYSICS.

But have you met GASTROPHYSICS?

Did you spot the extra G? 😉

Add one little letter and suddenly we travel from the physics of stars to the science of how humans experience food.

Gastrophysics brings together ideas from gastronomy and psychophysics to explore how our senses, surroundings, expectations and context influence the way we perceive and enjoy food.

Perhaps ExoGen lives somewhere between the two:

ASTROPHYSICS → GASTROPHYSICS

Space outside us.

Senses inside us.

And food somewhere wonderfully in between.

FOOD CAN CARRY MEMORY

Think about a food from your childhood.

Don't think about its nutritional value.

Think about the place.

The person.

The smell.

The sound.

The texture.

And then ask yourself:

How did it make me feel?

Sensory cues — particularly smell and taste — can evoke remarkably vivid autobiographical memories.

Researchers studying food-evoked emotions are increasingly looking beyond simple questions such as “Do you like this?” to understand the cognitive, behavioural and physiological dimensions of food experiences.

Perhaps the journey looks something like this:

SENSES → PERCEPTION → MEMORY → EMOTION → EXPERIENCE

And that makes food extraordinarily interesting.

WHAT IF WE DESIGNED THE EXPERIENCE?

This is where our curiosity at ExoGen begins.

What happens when we bring together:

food + sensory science + gastrophysics + intelligent technology + human imagination?

Could we design not only what food is, but how it is experienced?

Could intelligent technology help us understand individual sensory preferences?

Could AI contribute to increasingly personalised food experiences?

Could robotics and new methods of food creation give us new forms, textures and interactions?

And what happens when we take those questions beyond Earth?

We don't claim to know all the answers.

We want to explore the questions.

WHY SPACE?

Space gives us an extraordinary lens through which to rethink food.

Imagine removing many of the things surrounding a meal on Earth.

The kitchen.

The family table.

The familiar smell of home.

Much of Earth's sensory environment.

Even gravity itself.

For humans living far from Earth, food may need to do more than provide nutrients.

It may also remain part of celebration, memory, connection, variety and the human experience of being far from home.

So perhaps the question for the future isn't only:

What should we eat?

It might also be:

How do we want to experience food?

And ultimately:

HOW DO WE WANT TO FEEL?

YOUR FIRST BEYOND TASTE EXPERIMENT

Try something before you leave.

Close your eyes.

Think of one food from your childhood.

Now forget the recipe for a moment.

What did it smell like?

What was its texture?

What sounds surrounded it?

Where were you?

Who was there?

What moment does it bring back?

And finally:

How did it make you feel?

That small experiment is where our journey Beyond Taste begins.

Welcome.

Susan Benyo

Founder & CEO

ExoGen Space s.r.o.

WE HELP YOU TASTE THE FUTURE.

KEEP EXPLORING

JOIN THE EXOGEN BEYOND TASTE COMMUNITY

Explore future food, space, sensory science, gastrophysics, intelligent technology and the human experiences connecting them.

Space is only the beginning.

SCIENCE BEHIND THIS SOL

1. Spence C. Gastrophysics: The Lens of Psychological and Sensory Research. Oxford Crossmodal Research Laboratory.

2. Spence C. (2020). Multisensory Flavour Perception: Blending, Mixing, Fusion, and Pairing Within and Between the Senses. Foods, 9(4), 407.

3. Vi CT et al. (2018). Multisensory Technology for Flavor Augmentation. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 26.

4. Kaneko D et al. (2018). Methods for Evaluating Emotions Evoked by Food Experiences. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 911.

5. Ernst A et al. (2021). The Proust Machine: What a Public Science Event Tells Us About Odour-Evoked Memory. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 623910.