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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Nutr.

Sec. Nutrition and Food Science Technology

Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnut.2025.1641849

This article is part of the Research TopicFood Production: The Impact of Digital Manufacturing TechniquesView all articles

EateryTag: Investigating Unobtrusive Edible Tags using Digital Food Fabrication

Provisionally accepted
  • Saitama University, Saitama, Japan

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Human-Food Interaction (HFI) examines how digital integration can enhance dining experiences, with food tagging playing a crucial role in connecting physical dining environments with digital information. Attaching optical tags to the surface or sides of food often detracts from its aesthetics, negatively impacting the perceived taste and overall dining experience. To address this issue, we propose an unobtrusive food tagging approach that embeds tags inside the food, maintaining both its visual appeal and sensory qualities. We first developed a tagging method using a 3D printer and proposed an end-to-end pipeline for embedding and retrieving the tags. We evaluated this method in terms of tag detectability, concealability, and the eating experience. Additionally, we developed tagging methods using molding and stamping to extend acceptability to the traditional cooking environment. Through a workshop with three home chefs, we found that these methods are accessible and easy to adopt for novice users. Our findings demonstrate the potential of embedded food tagging to integrate digital information into the dining experience without compromising culinary integrity. This approach offers new directions for HFI research and practical applications.

Keywords: edible tag, Human-food interaction, 3D food printing, Digital gastronomy, unobtrusive tagging, Computer Vision

Received: 05 Jun 2025; Accepted: 26 Sep 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Miyatake and Punpongsanon. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Yamato Miyatake, yamato.miyatake@fip.ics.saitama-u.ac.jp

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