‘Electric’ chopsticks that make food seem more salty | Hacker News Reader

‘Electric’ chopsticks that make food seem more salty

theguardian.com

194 pointscamtarn132 comments

I am a Japanese resident. I am not sure how the local people will react to it commercially. So much of the homestyled food goes with traditional cookware. People always are curious to try out things like this - but fall back to age-old practices. I won't be surprised if people continue using their wooden or ceramic chopsticks and this thing becomes a novelty item in upscale department stores.

Consider smoked and deep fried food items. Universally, we have evidence they are connected to cardiovascular diseases and cancers. Or that raw uncooked meat could be risky. Yet, the sashimi, basashi, tempura, and various grilled item food industry is going strong. Educated Japanese understand the risks but it is their way of life - and healthcare has presumably evolved to take care of the sporadic incidents well enough. This country does emphasize on good health and longevity. Such risks from sodium get downplayed easily.

Japan has a high inertia for sometimes good and sometimes not-so-good. But leaving aside this new invention, there is much scope to have even healthier food and lifestyles.

I'm not sure that anyone really understands the risks, and certainly not my 84 year old Japanese mother in law that's healthy, walks to the market every day and lives on her own in a 3 story house so she's walking up and down stairs all the time.

Fried food is a regular part of her diet, yet it doesn't seem to have impacted her negatively.

Glad to hear she's doing fine for her age. Surely we understand there are statistical variations, and she's on the healthier side luckily. But fried & smoked diets have very strong correlation to cancers in general, and these are validated by studies over last 2 decades. If I remember correctly, after prostrate, stomach cancer is the next common carcinoma in East Asia. (I could be a bit wrong on relative orders as this information was from my college time in 2000s).

Each of us have different tolerances in our biological make-up. I wish people like her more years of good health.

You call it "luck", but that's what I meant by people really don't understand the risks, I don't think it's luck at all - Doctors make lots of recommendations based on broad trends, but they don't really understand an individual person's risk.

I think it boils down entirely to pure individual chance. Someone may be a chain smoker and die naturally. That does not obviate the medical fact that smoking increases the chances of lung cancer. It is like rolling a die - you can estimate probabilities but that your dice will land two 6's are purely based on the event. Yet, done over a couple of thousand trials we definitely know it happens 1 per 36 tries on average.

In cases such as your MIL, maybe she's less prone to gastric inflammation. That simple fact reduces her chances of other serious ailments. Its a biological chain reaction after all. Cancer is strongly linked to chronic inflammation.

Isn't that like saying someone who won the lottery wasn't lucky, we just don't understand the individual person's chances to win? Like in some way it makes sense but for the purposes of actually deciding whether to recommend whether someone should buy a lottery ticket you can do quite well by looking at the broad trends.

No, winning the lottery is the definition of luck, the lotteries spend a lot of money making sure that's true. There's nothing a person could do (besides play more) that increases their chance of winning.

But I believe that long-lived people are more than just "lucky", there's some physiological difference (possibly coupled with environmental differences) that makes the difference between people that eat similar diets and have much different levels of health/longevity.

Extrapolating this line of thought: Let us say, two identical twins are brought up the exact same way. Can we be certain they will have exact same longevity?

Their genetic make up might be similar but there are trillions of stochastic processes happening every moment at the cellular, and each one is capable of a cascade effect in the long run. I think it would be reasonable to assume that scale of precise personalized prediction / recommendation will be a distant possibility, if ever it is even possible.

We might get capable of creating extremely good probabilistic models however, with less than a quarter of the modeling resources by quantifying the different parameters of life taken statistically (e.g. average calorific intake, medicine dependence, exercise etc). That might actually get very close to examining the uncertainty about health & longevity.

It's closer to saying that someone's successful startup where they used X counter-intuitive strategy was "luck".

Perhaps they were lucky but it's also possible that conventional wisdom on X is wrong.

Yeah but the difference is we don't peer review large medical studies on successful startup strategies. We're talking about biomedical research and oncology, not "conventional wisdom"

The controls and reproducibility of studies on human nutrition may not be as rock solid as you think they are. The conventional wisdom on nutrition has changed radically since many doctors, including one in my direct family went through medical school.

There are also considerable distortions due to who is paying for the research.

Given the difficulties with these types of nutrition studies I don’t think its clear at all that fried or smoked foods cause most of the excess cancers in East Asia. It could just as well be the sodium or something about the pickling process or something else. I’m from the Southern US where people eat a lot of smoked BBQ and fried foods and get obesity and heart disease but not as much stomach cancer.

A lot of it has to also do with genetics. Some population groups are more resilient to certain kind of chronic ailments.

Anecdotally, in NE India, there is a midsize city Aizawal which is known as the cancer capital of India. Stomach cancer is pervasive in that community. Their diet is mostly smoked pork. The part of population which consumes less smoked meat, remarkably showed a lesser prevalence of abdominal cancer. It is heuristically known. An empirical fact, if you might call it - as no one has systematically measured the cause-effect. The conclusion may even be flawed, but so far it looks like the observation supports the hypothesis.

Exactly. I just posted this in another thread. It's a study on the link between high sodium intake(i.e. pickled foods like kimchi) and stomach cancer(5th most common cancer):

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2021.80122...

I don't expect Koreans to stop eating kimchi anytime soon.

The effect size is also tiny in absolute numbers. With a base rate of 0.004 and a relative risk of 1.28 it would take what, 1000 people reducing their intake to prevent one case of cancer?

In a population of 300 million, like the US, that's 300,000 prevented cancer cases. We reported about 5x as many new cases last year.

I'm not saying we should mandate reduced sodium intake or anything, but having the ability to reduce cancer incidence by 20% is huge. Not just in terms of raw economics, but the societal impact of not losing grandma or grandpa unnecessarily is something we can't easily quantify.

I doubt anyone in the US in the 90s expected smoking rates to drop the way they did, but it is possible to discourage unhealthy behaviors that have externalized costs, like smoking tobacco or eating garbage.

> sashimi

I'm cherry picking one thing from your great comment, but is it really risky? If properly frozen, fish is perfectly safe to consume.

Sashimi is a bit risky if the fish has been sliced for a while, and the temperature isn't as low as it should be. It quickly loses its texture. I personally avoid it in such cases & hence only use a handful of brick & mortar joints who I know personally. Good quality, fresh sashimi can be very expensive. I had few pieces (2-4) of bluefin tuna last week & it set me back by ~$70. Issues are few but then the majority of worms & food poisoning cases are from the chain sushi/sashimi joints, where the items are just placed-replaced several times on the conveyor or the fish has been in the open to quickly serve incoming orders. They are affordable to have regularly but I will not recommend. Japan is generally very safe about food quality, but sometimes dark pockets do exist in food industry nevertheless.

(P.S: If any of you are traveling to Tokyo in future, I will be happy to recommend specific places which might interest your tastes. My email is in my bio)

>If properly frozen...

That's the important part - there's risk if the fish isn't processed or handled correctly.

Isn't that true of literally everything though? Raw vegetables are not safe to eat unless washed properly, cooked meat isn't safe to eat unless cooked properly, raw meat isn't safe to eat unless handled properly, damn even something as simple as garlic oil isn't safe to eat unless you know exactly how it was prepared and stored.

I have no idea if the risk with sashimi is any greater than with other things, but I'd guess not?

Sushi (with fish) and sashimi are usually on the list of foods to avoid for high risk people along with raw meats, cold deli meats, runny or raw eggs, etc. Those are usually a little overcautious, but I think it's safe to say there's more risk with fish than with eating a raw vegetable.

It is true, BUT, (and this is a big but, almost a baby got back but) the risk is not the same for improperly handled vegetables vs. meats or seafood. Poorly handled veggies generally will give you E. Coli, or a similar sort of nasty stomach/food illness.

Bad seafood can give you parasites.

It’s like the risk of surfing vs. the risk of driving a wave-runner. Both can injure you on the water but a bad wave-runner accident might kill you.

Bad seafoods can also give you a bunch of other bacterial infections. Meat, and in particular fish meat, is a breading ground for all sorts of bacteria.

After washing a carrot, it stays safe to eat for hours at room temp. Fruits can stay safe to eat for days. Fish, on the other hand, goes bad in about 2 hours when it's cooked. Much faster when it's raw.

This is probably less invention, more marketing.

Manipulating ions requires a lot of current. Drop an AA battery to a soup and nothing remarkable happens quickly, but lick the same battery and you will definitely feel it immediately.

If you do it while something sour/salty is in your mouth, your tongue may get confused, since it's only prepared to detect 5 flavors plus hot and cold, and it may simply assigns the extra feeling to the strongest sour/salty/umami taste currently experienced.

The electronics is probably just to cut the current when the two chopsticks touch to prevent short circuit.

There are similar articles from a few years ago, like this: https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a15702/simulatin...

Only one chopstick appears to have an electrode, while the wristband looks like a ground contact. This device looks like it makes a circuit from the chopsticks, through your mouth and body to your arm.

Yup, the "sodium ion" thing sounds like BS. Almost certainly this thing, if it does anything, is merely shocking the tongue at a voltage/current that's high enough to be detected, low enough that you don't know you are being shocked.

Whether or not that "confuses" you into thinking this is salty, IDK.

A bit sad that they confuse umami with salt in the opener but this does sound like a great invention.

An acquaintance suffers from kidney disease and due to the zero salt intake has lost much appetite for food. A lot is still possible when cooking with tomato or mushroom rich foods but it’s hard. Something like this would be welcomed!

They say it works the same way on sodium glutamate ions, so I guess it boosts umami too.

I'm wondering whether it'd work to make something like this myself.

They don't conflate the two. They say you can taste the umami without the downside of ingesting too much salt in the process (due to the high salinity of typical dishes with umami flavor)

You're confusing salt with sodium - this enhances sodium ions, so it affects salt as well as MSG, which is tied to umami.

Umami != salty.

The article states that this device works on Sodium Chloride and Sodium Glutamate, so technically both tastes apply.

I suspect that eating every day with this chopsticks could made people to eat more salt than before

They are shocking with electricity their own taste buds... maybe destroying them, or reducing their density?. After some time people with a numb scorched tongue could find the food bland, and would start adding more and more salt to reach the same level of tastiness again.

So I wonder if this would be sustainable in the long term (but is just an opinion, and I could be wrong).

If real this seems like a product that would be, at best, 'As Seen on TV'. The last line of the article makes it seem entirely satire though. "Miyashita’s lab ... has also invented a lickable TV screen that imitates the flavours of various foods."

> They said participants given reduced-salt miso soup had commented on the improved “richness, sweetness and overall tastiness” of the dish.

Maybe I misunderstand, but how did participants eat miso soup using these chopsticks?

Typically, a bowl of soup is "eaten" by bringing the bowl to the lips, tilting to flow the liquid, and stirring the solid bits into your mouth with the chopsticks.

Miso soup is not drunk with a spoon in Japan. Here's a cooking channel video which shows the host eating the soup using chopsticks (but if you watch any media where Japanese people eat miso soup, you'll see the same thing): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0cnsQHHK94&t=469.

Chopsticks are for eating the food floating in the soup then you’d normally drink the broth after?

This is awesome! I would buy them just for the novelty but I’m sure we all could eat a bit less salt. The future would be adapting the tech to fit inside the stick itself so it’s not even noticeable. Then you could use an electric toothbrush-like charger to top up the battery in between meals. Or even simpler, a wireless charging table placemat?

The batteries inside AirPods are about the diameter of chopsticks so we have the battery tech available already. If these really do become a reality, I will probably import some.

> I’m sure we all could eat a bit less salt

We could but there is some doubt about whether it is necessary, and if necessary, for whom.

Cite your sources, because there's plenty of sources that indicate health risks with high salt intake, especially later in life.

Japan has the developed world's highest life expectancies and yet the Japanese eat double the amount of recommended salt per day. To me that seems sort of inconsistent with salt being a great health risk

Showing examples that refute people hypotheses is so valuable.

Reminds me of the Israeli paradox, Israel has very low saturated fat intake but high heart disease rates. This information on it's own completely disproves any claim that high saturated fat could be the sole cause of heart disease. There must be either an underlying or parallel mechanism that explains Israel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_paradox

*It's all most like biology is complicated and is hard to understand.

Any "sole cause" claim about health/diet stuff seems highly suspect at best, I can scarcely imagine anything such a claim could be true for. You can't even say that cigarettes are the sole cause of lung cancer; the link between the two is incontrovertible but there are still many other ways to get lung cancer (asbestos, radon, bad luck, etc..)

Maybe a result of an higher than usual endogamy in the population.

In biology is called effect of the founder, and explain why Jews of german origin have a higher incidence of several recessive genetic diseases than other groups. Many of the survivors moved probably in mass to Israel after the war.

It's typically only an issue if coupled with high fructose. I'd argue the abnormally high levels of fructose are a much bigger health crisis, and salt is relatively minor in comparison.

Not a comment on the interplay, but Japan is well within WHO guidelines for sugars. In school, I heard that Japan reduced gastric cancer cases by 50% when salt intake reduced by 10%. Probably can’t repeat that same public health success again, but with nearly 5m individuals, the effect is strong. I’m not aware of as big a meta analysis for fructose.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34957192/

Like the great majority of health advice, especially from governments, limiting salt is based on what is essentially either a misunderstanding at best or pure pseudo-science at worst.

First two studies I found when you google for Salt intake and all cause mortality. All cause mortality is in my opinion the only real metric that matters for this discussion. You can find studies on it increasing blood pressure temporarily but if it doesn't translate to death who cares (See Japan and Korea)

https://www.karger.com/Article/Abstract/492034#:~:text=No%20.... (In dialysis patients)

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33351135/

*Not really expecting this to convince anyone, so low effort, but maybe people can acknowledge biology is complex and we don't have any idea about what any food really does. Hence so many studies showing different results because the signal is so weak.

Plenty of pre-1970 sources, none post 1970, generally the opposite.

The most famous historical study was rigged from the start.

Check out The Salt Fix: Why the Experts Got It All Wrong--and How Eating More Might Save Your Life. I haven't read it yet but it's on my list.

Oh dear, what happens if one of those electric chopsticks touches one of one's tooth filling?

Anyone who has had the unfortunate experience of accidentally chewing a bit of aluminum foil will know what I mean - pain arising from even the minutest ionic charge produced by the foil can be excruciatingly painful.

Perhaps these chopsticks should come with a warning about not using them if you've a mouth full of fillings.

> The chopsticks work by using ... a mini-computer worn on the eater’s wristband.

Impressive, most minicomputers would probably break your arm if you tried to wear them on your wrist.

Never seen a fitness tracker?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minicomputer

> In a 1970 survey, The New York Times suggested a consensus definition of a minicomputer as a machine costing less than US$25,000 (equivalent to $174,000 in 2021), with an input-output device such as a teleprinter and at least four thousand words of memory, that is capable of running programs in a higher level language, such as Fortran or BASIC.

i think your regular off the shelf fitbit could fit this description... maybe you'd have to stretch the definition of input-output device, but otherwise it makes sense

This sounds like something David Byrne would make up. "In the future..."

Both adding more salt and eating less flavored food seems more preferable than a chopstick tethered to a giant battery attached to the arm.

From the description in the video, it looks like this only works with soup. Is that correct? If so, it seems like it would be better to embed in the bowl than in the chopsticks, to avoid the need for wires and the wrist-worn device.

The wires are needed because they are creating a circuit from your mouth to the liquid. The "sodium ion" think is almost assuredly BS. This thing is shocking your tongue and my guess is for some people that gives a "salty" signal to their brain when the voltage is right.

The question is, is the saltiness only limited to the minisecond (if) the chopsticks touch the tongue or even in the food bits?

To me a lot flavours are very noticable in first second(s) and quickly lose their intensity after that. It might not be much of an issue if it only tastes more salty for the short time while the chopsticks are in your mouth, if the brain continues to to think the food is salty.

i wonder if there are waveforms for the other tastebuds... taste-enabled nausea inducing vr here we come

Where do these daily sodium recommendations come from? If Japanese people on average are eating two times the recommended daily amount and are not seeing adverse effects then is the recommendation more of you don’t need to eat so much sodium?

Japan has high stomach cancer rates and sodium is implicated https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1860129/

How much sodium you need is also heavily dependant on your physical activity. A more active populous needs more salt than a sedentary one

Have the clinical tests been published? I suppose they could do a blind test by giving both groups the same sets of chopsrics but one doesn't function, but something in the way the article is written makes me skeptical they did that.

As someone who has a tendency to dislike food that are too salty, I'd love for that to come out, just so that I can eat dishes low in salt prepared for people using this invention but with me using normal chopsticks :)

Would this be satisfying though? Most enjoyment of food comes from swallowing it. I’m guessing it doesn’t last as a sensation.

I for one like to taste my food before swallowing.

I don’t think the positive sensation of eating would work if your food ceased to be tasty right before swallowing

The respondents said it did.

It's more impressive that they can eat miso soup with chop sticks, in their example.

This is how Japanese people eat miso soup[1]. They don't use spoons, they use the bowl like a cup.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0cnsQHHK94&t=469

This is the way in Japan. They drink the soup using the bowl and chopstick to pick up the parts. No spoons.

I'd say the chopsticks are not electronic but simply electrified.

The word "electronic" neither appears in the title or body of the article, nor in the HN post title.

Ramp up the voltage and you get a nice "smoked" flavor.

This is cool, but irrelevant to me until someone turns it into a consumer product.

Can we be pedantic about the simplistic title? Japan did not invent the chopsticks, but some researchers at a university that were sponsored by a beverage manufacturer did.

If these researchers were anywhere else, what would the title read?

If it were a British university, it (the British paper) would name the university. ('University of Cambridge invents 'electric' knife and fork that...'.)

I think it's fair enough, it's just reducing the name of the (likely unfamiliar) university to its host nation.

How can an University ever stop being unfamiliar if its name is omitted in favour of the country its in?

It's the job of foreign media organisations to manage a university's PR/marketing?

No but if they promote some but not others, then they're implicitly taking up that job.

Is it reasonable for an university to become familiar for the general public across the world?

Yes, absolutely. It's how we cross distances and learn more about each other. It's how we become more than the sum of our parts.

There are many thousands of universities. They can't all be familiar. Those that most consistently produce quality research (or have the best PR) will be well known. Getting there? That's a bit of a chicken or the egg problem: Media outlets aren't going to want to bog down a headline with unrecognizable names-- fewer clicks. Arguably worse for the research too since. When it is noticed, it will be linked better to the University, but it won't be noticed as much because of a title that isn't SEO friendly or doesn't grab attention as well.

There are thousands of sodas, and you know what Coca-Cola is.

And I'm familiar with many universities in my own country as well as a handful of the most prominent ones abroad, so..?

I think we’re in agreement, haha.

I don't think that contradicts what I wrote-- it's an example of it.

I mean, having been to Japan, and having a decent knowledge of their culture… This is such a Japanese invention.

> Can we pedantic about …

I tend to agree. The country in which it was invented, or the nationalities of those who invented it, are not relevant at all.

You might include the country if it was newsworthy. Such as new evidence that “The Roman Empire invented the table fork”.

I think sub-editors put country descriptors in as mild click bait. Japan is perceived as having an interesting record of niche eye raising inventions. If it was “France invents an electric spoon that makes food seem sweeter” I am not sure I’d be as ready to visit that article as this one.

The country in which it was invented is relevant because it was invented to address health concerns caused by the common diet within the country.

If nothing else, this goes to show that headlines are meant only to catch your eye and not be a primary source of info in and of themselves. It's an issue in general, where people think headlines are meant to condense the article as a one-line summary, that's simply not true. I think the use of synecdoche here is reasonable. The publication matters, too. If the researchers were in England, the title would certainly be different. If the researchers were in Brazil, it would likely be similar.

“Those whacky Japanese” is an anglophone news media trope.

Well, or “inventive” or “futuristic” or “advanced”.

Not all media tropes are negative like I perceive “whacky” to be.

Meanwhile, we get snuggies and loads of single purpose kitchen tools advertised on TV.

Are those commercials still around, or is that a marker of age now? Last time I had over-the-air TV on, the ads were all Medicare management, prescription medicines, and "Won't someone please save these abused puppies?", as opposed to Chia Bob Ross heads.

A lot of those wacky TV advertised gadgets are being sold predominantly to the elderly, even when the ads use young actors. Some of them are earnestly useful to elderly people with limited strength or mobility. Others are simply just so dumb, you'd have to be senile to buy it.

Those commercials have metastasized into ad-chum appearing on every news article we read on the web.

Whether it's a mesh that allegedly keeps leaves out of your roof gutters, some electro-stimulation medical quackery device, or this new knee sleeve that is taking seniors by storm, the industry of selling junk to the credulous will never go away.

Ok but try watching some of their TV. They enjoy wacky stuff.

Probably "French researchers invent electric chopsticks".

The fact we can identify "Japan" as an entity says a lot about the cultural weight it holds. Not a bad thing.

What if some of these "French researchers" are let's say Chinese citizens residing in France since finding homogenous research team is very unlikely?

I'm quite annoyed with these constructions as foreigner living outside my home country when politicians/media always say Czech citizens this, Czech citizens that as if there were no residents with other citizenship affected by new laws/decisions.

They are still "french researchers" since they are doing their research in France. That's reading a bit too much into it in my opinion (also an expat).

- French company invents…

- French lab invents…

- Researchers in France invent…

Of course it is a bad thing. It is treated as a homogenous blob, an “other”.

The bad thing is that the cultural weight Japan holds is based on myths, hearsay, misunderstandings, or lack of deep insights due to the language barrier. The image of Japan in the US and to a lesser extent in Europe is very far removed from reality.

And everyone else thinks America is what they see on TV.

It's not important, unless there are wars about it.

As a Briton, I see an awful lot more of America on TV than Japan. As a result then it's surely inherently more (likely to be) balanced/matching up with reality?

Compared to Japan; the only show I can think of that I've seen that's even sort of set there was The Man in the High Castle!

> As a result then it's surely inherently more (likely to be) balanced/matching up with reality?

I see almost nothing on TV that matches up with the actual daily life in America, so no - seeing more US TV doesn't help in that respect.

That's a very subcomplex idea of how media works. Of course, everybody understands that there is a difference between fiction and reality. And "reality TV" is fiction as well, even if some people might still be fooled by that.

Still the reality of US life does reveal itself simply by the "what" and "how" Americans create their media, like TV, movies, radio, podcasts, web video, and so on.

Or put in terms an American with a tech background would understand: Everybody knows Walter White is not a real person, and Breaking Bad isn't a documentary. Yet the reality of American-style healthcare and personal financial ruin for many people who are misfortunate enough to get cancer and have it treated, is not fiction.

it's surely inherently more (likely to be) balanced/matching up with reality?

Not really. TV/Movies are stereotypes & caricatures. News media shows mostly the extremes, or anything violent. Think of native British shows you might watch: are they accurate portrayals of day to day life? (Besides Dr. Who, which I'm pretty sure is a documentary.)

You can't be this naive.

I have to disagree that it's not important.

Japan birthed and housed the researchers and produced the problem that needed to be solved, therefore Japan invented this. This is an extremely Japanese invention, I doubt it would have been invented by any other nation.

Oh no that is dweeb blasphemy. Never ever question or even dare to criticize any little thing concerning the alleged awesomeness of all things Japanese.

I suppose you meant weeb(not "dweeb"), which is short for weeaboo[0], which in turn is short for wapanese, which, finally, is short for "wannabe Japanese".

[0] Originally used in an unrelated comic strip here: https://pbfcomics.com/comics/weeaboo/

Dweeb is an actual slang word that predates weeaboo by several decades.

It doesn't appear to have roots with tied to Japanese culture though: https://www.etymonline.com/word/dweeb

Dweeb = general term for a nerd / loser / opposite of "jock".

Weeb = a dweeb whose particular interest is Japan

Yes, but weeb makes a lot more sense in this context. It's not a weird suggestion here IMO.

I meant "Dweeb". "Weeb" is just a subcategory of it.

> "Weeb" is just a subcategory of it.

I wouldn't say so, no.

Dweeb is a pretty wide insult, but it still implies things that aren't part of what "weeb" means.

As far as I know the two aren't connected (outside of the spelling overlap), but if you like it this way that's fine.

both describe losers is a connection

> Miyashita’s lab is exploring other ways in which technology can be used to engage the senses – it has also invented a lickable TV screen that imitates the flavours of various foods

Yeah thanks I'll pass.

Let's find better ways to spread germs, nature is being inefficient, we can improve it!

I guess on the other hand this could enhance the flavors of food delivered to patients who cannot chew... so you deliver nutrients through a popsicle-like device that also just delivers otherwise bland food.

Looks like someone's trying very hard to win the next edition of the Ig Nobel prize.

Sounds very Wonka-esque

So, headlines 10 years from now: "Long Term Use of Stimulated Taste Sensations Linked to Outbreak of Tongue Cancer".

I had no idea that was even possible, very cool tech!

Have you never licked a battery?

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