The Virtual Cafeteria: An Immersive Environment for Interactive Food Portion-Size Education

PubDate: October 2018

Teams: Hacettepe University

Writers: Ufuk Celikcan；Ahmed Şamil Bülbül；Cem Aslan；Zehra Buyuktuncer；Kübra Işgın；Gözde Ede；Nuray Kanbur

PDF: The Virtual Cafeteria: An Immersive Environment for Interactive Food Portion-Size Education

Abstract

This work introduces the Virtual Cafeteria, a novel virtual reality simulation of a buffet-style cafeteria for use in food portion-size education of adolescents as an alternative to established approaches such as verbal education and education with fake food replicas. As user behavior is automatically recorded to the millisecond, the application also serves as a tool for assessment of food portion-size perception. The Virtual Cafeteria offers a wide range of energy and nutrient densities in 64 food and 7 beverage options. Addressing the limitations and shortcomings of the immersive environments used in previous studies on food portion-size, the Virtual Cafeteria features not only a considerably wider variety of food but also multisensory feedback coupled with a high level of interaction and photorealism, and imperceptible latency.