On the contribution of the senses to food emotional experience

Emotions are an important component of our daily lives and contribute to behavior as well as general well-being. Foods are prominent sources of emotions (e.g. enjoyment, disgust…). One question that may arise in food research is how the different senses interact to create a unified affective representation of food. Indeed, current research suggests that rather than a unimodal processing of each sensory aspect of a food, there is a very early and almost undistinguishable integration of the senses, especially for the construction of flavor. In the present paper, we argue that a multisensory approach is necessary to understand the way senses converge to enable an emotional experience when perceiving food. We further put an emphasis on the fact that such multisensory integration is influenced by higher-order cognitive processes and possibly by emotions as well. After presenting theories in the field as well as experimental data, we discuss some paradigms that could pave the way for future research on food-induced emotional processing.