The way your food looks and smell can affect the way it tastes. But it was never explored as to what extent do looks and smell of food affect its perceived taste. In a new series on the website Vice called Food Hacking, Japanese scientist and professor Takuji Narumi was visited by Swedish host Simon Klose.

As reported in CNET, Narumi has designed a technology where he can change the appearance of food to see its effect on how we perceive or taste it.

"Food hacking means brain hacking to me," Narumi says. "How do we create new eating experiences by manipulating the senses in our brains? To make food taste different by changing humans instead of food, that's the most interesting to me."

In a previous experiment, Narumi has already shown how the changing the colour of a drink multiple times while holding it could affect its perceived flavour.

In the first episode of Food Hacking, the host wears a pair of experimental virtual-reality goggles while holding a real cookie. The researchers are able to change the size of the cookie through the goggles.

According to Narumi, when the food is virtually enlarged to 50 percent than its actual size, it leads 10 percent less consumption. However when the food was shrunk to 30 percent less its size, it actually makes people eat 15 percent more.

Narumi also demonstrated the popularly known Delboeuf Illusion when applied to food. This is the idea that the same amount of food seems more on a small plate than in a large plate. Narumi added a little twist in this demonstration. The table also changes the size of the virtual plate depending on the food you are eating. This helps the participant not to get used to a one plate size.

It gets more exciting after 10 minutes though. An impressive demonstration comes when Klose wears an even more complicated headset that can change the look of the cookie while also pumping a corresponding fragrance to his nose. A plain cookie became a much sweeter lemon cookie during the experiment.

This kind of technology can later be developed so hospital foods can be more palatable or even the boring ordinary food can be more special.

"When we displayed this at a computer graphics conference in the US, Narumi says, "NASA approached us and said that they really wanted to try this. So in the future, this could also be used for space food."

What do you think of Food Hacking's first episode? Are you excited to see the virtual reality of food hacking? Hit us with your comments below.