No Pie in the (Digital) Sky: Co-Imagining the Food Metaverse

Human behaviour and habits co-evolve with technology, and the metaverse is poised to become a key player in reshaping how we live our everyday life. Given the importance of food in our daily lives, we ask: how will our relationships with food be transformed by the metaverse, and what are the promises and pitfalls of this technology? To answer this, we propose a co-design study that reveals the important elements people value in their daily interactions with food. We then present a speculative catalogue of novel metaverse food experiences, and insights from discussing these ideas with food designers, anthropologists and metaverse experts. Our work aims to provide designers with inspirations for building a metaverse that: provides inclusive opportunities for the future of food; helps re-discover the forgotten or lost knowledge about food; facilitates the exploration, excitement and joy of eating; and reinvigorates the ways that food can soothe and heal.