Food waste remains a critical global challenge, undermining sustainability and straining food systems. This study investigates adaptable consumption as a transformative strategy for reducing household food waste, emphasising its role in enhancing resilience within food systems. Adaptability of consumption empowers households to adjust food-related behaviours in response to changes in food availability, household needs, and other disruptions. Through cultural probes and semi-structured interviews with 11 Dutch households (43 participants), this study identifies five actionable opportunities for supporting consumers in more adaptability toward food waste reduction: 1) supporting flexible meal moments, 2) reclaiming food edibility, 3) reintegrating food into routines, 4) integrating feedback loops, and 5) playing into life-changing moments. These opportunities represent critical moments in time, behavioural routines, or dynamics where food waste-reducing behaviours can be successfully introduced and fostered. The study identifies practical recommendations within each opportunity, including implementing sensory-driven food labels to guide safe consumption decisions, introducing storage tools to minimise waste, and leveraging digital tools to provide actionable feedback, which can support households in adopting sustainable and waste-reducing practices. By integrating such interventions, stakeholders can enable households to adopt concrete, sustainable practices that align with systemic goals for food waste reduction and resilience.

People waste a lot of food, especially at the consumption stage in consumer households. Despite the urgency of this topic, little is known about how consumers use visual inspection to decide to throw away fruits and vegetables at different stages of ripening and spoilage. We presented 366 US consumers with images of a banana, mango, cucumber, and avocado in 5 stages of decay in an online study and we determined how signs of decay affected participants’ consumption, preparation and disposal behaviors. As expected, product attractiveness, freshness, healthiness, and nutritiousness decreased, while the degree of decay, overripeness, and disgust increased over time. The number of people willing to consume the product was linearly related to the perceived proportion of the product affected by decay, while the number of people wanting to cut off bad parts was highest when about 40% of the product was judged to be affected. As time went on, the banana was cooked and mashed more often, while the cucumber was peeled more often. As growing, ripening and decay differ considerably between agricultural products, it is important to take sensory and preparation differences into account when investigating consumption and disposal behaviors.

To increase practical relevance, scientific research on food design is slowly shifting toward studying real-life food situations, letting go of experimental control to allow creative freedom, and studying design considerations during the creative process. On the other hand, some chefs and food designers have started to develop collaborative activities with academic professionals and involve researchers in their work who can conduct sensory tests of their cooking efforts. Some design researchers try to obtain general principles of interest from the creation and evaluation of food prototypes, for example in digital gastronomy, while using playfulness to increase dining engagement, or while trying to promote healthier and more sustainable food practices. This mutual cross-fertilization can enrich research activities and refine design and culinary practices.

For health and environmental reasons, humanity should reduce the consumption of animal-based products, whereas vegetable consumption should be increased. We created stimuli (drawings with texts) that may be able to increase or decrease the purchasing of mushrooms, cheese, and meat. During the design process, we identified four aspect categories (sensory, health, environment, moral) and we generated positive and negative examples for all products. In Study 1 we determined the familiarity, credibility and relevance of each aspect and measured emotional responses to them. In Study 2, we investigated to what extent four aspects combined in an infographic on a poster lessened or strengthened the emotional responses, purchase intention, and tendency to adapt behavior for the three products. Regression analyses showed that the emotional responses to the posters were well predicted by the responses to the product aspects. Purchase intentions were mainly affected by negative affect, while positive and negative affect seemed equally important for people’s intention to change behavior.

Consumers evaluate products with all their senses but exhibit considerable variability in the extent to which they actively use and rely on a specific sense. We know little about the variability in consumers’ propensity to actively engage their sense of smell in the context of product evaluation in purchase decision making. This research provides insights into this issue by conceptualizing the need for smell construct, detailing the development of the ENFAS scale, and providing state-of-the-art psychometric evidence of its validity. Ten studies contributed to a two-dimensional 11-item instrument, supporting the scale's external and cross-national validity, and establishing the position of need for smell in its nomological net. The results yield insight into how smell perception affects consumer choices and may help optimize product presentations for the retail context.

The market growth of plant-based alternatives to animal food products pushes agencies around the world to discuss specific regulations regarding their communication, terminology, and packaging design. We created and tested 18 packages of plant-based milk and plant-based chicken meat varying the “animalness” of terminology, container, image, and claim. An online survey was answered by a sample of 600 US participants. The image (cow or soybean on milk; chicken or wheat on meat) had a significant effect on the expected origin (animal or vegetable) of the products, but terminology (“milk”, “mylk” or “drink”; “chicken”, “strips” or “seitan”), container (plastic jug or carton box; plastic tray or glass jar), sensory claim (“creamy” or “smooth” on milk) and nutritional claim (“no cholesterol” or “low sodium” on chicken) did not. We found significant effects of the type of container on the willingness to try the meat and of terminology on the willingness to try the milk. Finally, terminology and image significantly affected consumers’ expectations for the sensory characteristics of the two products. These findings can help agencies effectively regulate terminology and packaging aspects of plant-based substitutes, as well as inform industries, scientists, and designers.

Commercial food packages may contain multiple messages. Packaging designers try to integrate all messages into a coherent design. Designers may use text, images or stylistic features, but these mediums may differ in their suitability to communicate specific product benefits. To evaluate the usefulness and effectiveness of these three mediums, we not only obtained consumer evaluations of packaging designs, but we also monitored the designer's experience during the design process. For three products (orange juice, muesli bar, plain yogurt) we created three consistent packaging designs communicating a single benefit through all three mediums, which was either a [1] health, [2] environmental, or [3] production, sensory or social claim. Subsequently, we developed inconsistent packages communicating three different messages through the three mediums. In an online survey, each of the 18 package variants was evaluated by 59–92 participants. Dummy regression analysis suggested that verbal claims had positive effects in communicating healthiness and environmental friendliness but elicited a negative tendency for sensory properties. The images we used indicated a positive effect for communicating worker conditions, but a negative effect for healthiness. Our stylistic elements suggested a positive effect for sensory appeal, but tended to have negative effects for environmental aspects. As regards designer dilemmas, we noticed that some images (e.g., in the medical domain) required specific graphic styles to make them acceptable for commercial use. Our findings suggest that consumers can handle multiple packaging messages, but finding an optimal configuration remains a design challenge.

While over the last century food systems have become more controlled, standard-ized and globalized, the plants and animals that form the basis of our food production still show seasonal fluctuation. The growth and reproductive cycles of these organisms follow seasonal weather patterns, including changes in rainfall, light exposure and temperature. Food designers should consider such aspects of season-ality, as they affect the availability and quality of the ingredients that they work with. Moreover, seasonality brings unique possibilities and challenges that can inspire new and interesting solutions for culinary applications, food propositions and social events. In addition, seasonality can be a goal to aspire to, because it can provide benefits in the domains of sustainability, health and well-being. For these reasons, we propose that, instead of following the current trend of desea-sonalization, food designers can contribute to reconcile our food systems with the seasons. This will provide an excellent opportunity for enabling more sustainable, meaningful and healthy rhythms of growing, processing, preparing and consuming food.