Many people like heavy-tasting food with a lot of sugar, salt, and spiciness, but excessive intake of condiments is a burden to the body. For the sake of health, the diet should be as light as possible, but most of the light and healthy foods are not tasty .
In this regard, scientists have developed tableware with its own “electronic seasoning”. A cup of boiled water and a plate of boiled vegetables without salt can also make you eat with gusto.
The salty taste in the food was discovered by electricity. The
volunteers were eating. They first picked up two portions of food with ordinary chopsticks to taste the taste, and quickly identified that the salt content of one was significantly lower than the other. The researchers changed their chopsticks and asked them to taste the same food again. Strangely, this time the volunteers felt that the two foods tasted equally salty.
The volunteers used the electric chopsticks developed by the research team of Meiji University in Japan for the second time. The chopsticks are connected to the controller on the wrist through wires, which can generate a weak current, and send the sodium ions in the food directly to the mouth through the power-generating chopsticks, making low-salt food taste more salty.
The researchers say the device can increase the saltiness of low-salt foods by about 1.5 times.
How did the salty taste come from?
The main component of table salt is sodium chloride. The sodium ions in it enter the taste cells of the tongue, accumulate in the cells, stimulate nerve cells to transmit signals, and finally produce a salty feeling in the brain.
In addition to table salt, sodium ions are also present in many foods, but may be affected by other ions that make it difficult to produce a noticeable salty taste.
Let the taste come out of nothing There is a plate of unsalted mashed potatoes on the
table , use a pair of strange electric chopsticks to taste a little bit, you can taste the salty mashed potatoes. There is a bowl of ordinary soup on the other side, take a few sips, it is either sour or bitter! There is nothing wrong with your sense of taste, it is just hallucinated by the “electricity” of chopsticks and bowls.
The electric chopsticks and electric soup bowls were developed by Nimesa Ranasingh, a researcher at the University of Maine in the United States. They are different from the electric chopsticks at Meiji University. A phenomenon of different flavors. Chopsticks and bowls emit electric currents of different amplitudes and frequencies, which directly stimulate your tongue to produce taste. What you taste is not the taste of food.
Lollipops that can only be licked but not bitten What should I do if I
want to eat candy but worry about tooth decay? Then have a digital lollipop. When you put the digital lollipop in your mouth, the device will generate a micro-current to stimulate the tongue’s taste receptors to simulate the four main tastes of sour, sweet, bitter, and salty. This product was also developed by Rana Singh’s team.
However, compared with other tastes, electrical stimulation has a lower success rate in making the tongue simulate sweet taste. He and the team also tried to use temperature changes to stimulate heat-sensitive neurons in the taste system to better simulate sweet taste.
Lemonade-flavored plain water The liquid in the
glass looks like lemonade and tastes like lemonade, but it’s filled with plain water.
This is another study by Rana Singh’s team. Sensors capture the color and acidity of a glass of lemonade, and then send the data to a special virtual taste cup. Electrodes on the edge of the cup release an electric current to stimulate the drinker’s taste buds. In order to imitate the taste of lemonade, LED lights are also installed in the cup, which can simulate the color of lemonade through light.
In this way, even friends who are thousands of miles apart can share the taste of a glass of water.
Gummy bears that don’t exist
Electricity not only provides a stronger taste, but also creates a virtual texture.
The research team of the University of Tokyo in Japan has developed an electronic device. The electrodes of the device are attached to the human masseter muscles, and the electric current generated by the electrodes stimulates the muscles to simulate the feeling of chewing different foods.
After wearing this device, even if there is no jelly in the mouth, you can still feel like chewing gummy bears, and you can even change the hardness or elasticity of the “gummy” by adjusting the device.
If the virtual taste technology can be applied in the game, can we also taste all kinds of food in the game?
