If they can make healthy foods taste good, that would be something.

If Dinner is missing some zing, a spoon studded with electrodes could help. It creates tastes on your tongue with a pulse of electricity. The utensil may add some extra flavour for people who shouldn’t eat certain foods.

Different frequencies and magnitudes of current through the electrodes can create the impression of saltiness, sourness or bitterness. By boosting the flavour of plain foods, a tool like this could be useful for people with diabetes or heart issues who have been ordered to cut down on salt and sugar.

To see how well the electric utensils could fool diners, 30 people tried them out in a taste test with plain water and porridge. The spoon and bottle were judged 40-83% successful at recreating the tastes, depending on which one they were aiming for. Bitter was the hardest sensation to get right. Some testers were distracted by the metallic taste of the electrodes.

• Uncategorized