According to the FDA, the average American eats 3,400 mg of sodium per day, although dietary guidelines for Americans recommend less than 2,300 mg per day. Going down to about a teaspoon of table salt a day can make your taste buds weep with dullness, but what if you could get less salty satisfaction from your salt shaker and more from your utensil?
Japanese food, beverage and pharmaceutical company Kirin recently announced that it and a team of researchers have developed a “chopstick device” that uses electrical stimulation to make food taste up to 50 percent saltier than it would otherwise.
Enlarge / The chopsticks send electrical stimulation.
The qualifier “device” is likely here because these are not typical chopsticks. They feature a cord that plugs into a power supply, making them bulkier than typical chopsticks and not the sort of paraphernalia you’d expect thrown in with a free delivery order.
The chopstick device developed by researchers at the Dr. Homei Miyashita Laboratory of Meiji University’s Department of Frontier Media Science, School of Interdisciplinary Mathematical Sciences in collaboration with Kirin, uses what the team calls an “electrical taste sensation” that consumes electricity so weak that it “does not affect the… human body,” Kirin claimed in his April 11 announcement.
An earlier prototype.
The current can be “adjusted” via Kirin[s] the role of ions such as sodium chloride (which forms the basis of salty taste) and monosodium glutamate (which forms the basis of sweet taste) in altering taste perception by making foods taste stronger or weaker.”
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Representation of the electrical stimulation waveform used.
The study involved 36 people between the ages of 40 and 65. The researchers used the stick device to compare the perceived saltiness of a food-like gel containing 0.80 percent salt and another gel containing 0.56 percent salt to represent a low-sodium food. The researchers then examined the “perceived saltiness” of each.
“When tasting samples mimicking low-sodium foods, perceived saltiness was enhanced by a factor of 1.5 when the engineered electrical stimulation waveform … was applied to the chopstick device compared to when no electrical stimulation was present,” the announcement reads kirin
“Furthermore, the study confirmed that the intensity of the salty taste of the sample mimicking low-sodium foods was the same as that of the sample mimicking common foods when electrical stimulation was applied… This suggests that foods with 30 percent When less salt is consumed, a device equipped with this technology can deliver a salty taste equivalent to that of a regular meal.”
Bar graph of perceived saltiness.
Researchers also used the device with “low-sodium miso soup,” but yielded no results. Kirin’s announcement also didn’t note whether the researchers looked at how the chopstick device affected subjects’ perceptions of the saltiness of non-sodium foods.
According to Kirin, the technology could find its way into other types of tableware, like spoons and tea bowls. Considering the need for a power supply, they would need additional storage space. But if there were a utensil that made every bite of low-sodium food taste even better, it might be worth clearing some space in your cupboard (how often do you use that blender anyway?).
Enlarge / test the chopstick device.
No plans to sell the chopstick device or any utensil using the technology have been shared. Instead, Kirin’s announcement vaguely indicated that it and the Miyashita Laboratory plan to use the research “to provide both mental satisfaction through a richer perceived taste, and health benefits from a nutritional perspective for those on a low-sodium diet.”