Soon you will be able to enjoy tasty meals without worrying about your salt intake. Japanese researchers have developed chopsticks that make a meal taste saltier by passing an electrical current through your body.
According to the Nutrition Center in the Netherlands, about 80 percent of adults consume more than the recommended 6 grams of salt per day. On average we eat almost 8 grams per day. In Japan, that is an average of 10 grams per day.
Too much salt is bad for your health. It also increases the risk of cardiovascular disease. But cutting back is difficult – you have to leave your favorite food or accept that it’s tastier.
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Researchers from Meiji University in Tokyo and the Japanese company Kirin therefore turned to electrical stimulation to make food taste saltier than it is. This technique has been researched for some time to mimic or enhance flavors.
The Japanese researchers are applying the technique in chopsticks. They contain an electrode at the part you put in your mouth and an electrode where you hold the stick. ‘When you put the food in your mouth, a closed circuit is created through the food, your tongue and your body. This provides an electrical stimulation of the taste buds on your tongue’, says Yoshinobu Kaji, one of the researchers.
In addition, the stick affects the movement of sodium ions (most salt consists of sodium and chlorine ions). ‘Electrical stimulation can temporarily bring the sodium ions in food closer to the tongue,’ says Kaji. ‘This makes the salty taste of the food stronger.’
So there must already be a little salt in the food. The electric chopsticks cannot make completely salt-free food taste saltier.
miso soup
To test the electric chopsticks, the researchers got 31 subjects who had experience with a low-salt diet to eat pieces of gel. Some of these had the same salt content as a regular meal, others contained 30 percent less salt. When the subjects ate the low-salt gel with the electric chopsticks, they indicated that they thought it tasted just as salty as the gel with the normal amount of salt. Sometimes they even estimate the low-salt gel to be a bit saltier.
Because a salty gel is different from a normal meal, the researchers also conducted an experiment with a low-salt version of the typical Japanese miso soup. The participants dipped the tip of the electric chopstick in the soup and drank it directly from the cup.
They thought the soup with the electric chopsticks didn’t just taste saltier; most found the whole taste better and richer. According to the researchers, this may indicate that the chopsticks also influence the taste of umami – the fifth basic taste that can be described as ‘savory’. Some even found the miso soup too salty due to the electrical stimulation.
western cutlery
According to the researchers, the current of up to 0.5 milliamps used for the electrical stimulation is not harmful and most people are not bothered by this weak current. More than 80 percent of the participants did not experience any major discomfort from the electrical stimulation. They indicated that they found it no problem to use the chopsticks daily.
According to the researchers, this will soon be possible. They are improving the design of the electric chopsticks to make them suitable for everyday use. “The goal is to have them in stores by 2023-2024,” says Kaji. There are no concrete plans for Western cutlery yet, but he thinks the technique also works with spoons and forks. The question is which one gets used more easily: the tongue feeling of eating with electric cutlery or the taste of a less salty diet.