Connected chopsticks to add less salt to your dishes

We should consume less than five grams of salt per day, according to the recommendations of the World Health Organization in order to limit the risk of high blood pressure, stroke or myocardial infarction. Advice that is difficult to achieve when you read the proportion of sodium in industrial dishes and if you decide to add a consumption of cheeses, breads, aperitif biscuits or even cold meats.

While bakers have pledged to reduce the salt content of their recipes by 10% from October 2023, a team of Japanese researchers has found a way to no longer deprive us of this salty taste that we love so much. without using the salt shaker…

A technology to modify the taste of a dish

The only condition: knowing how to handle chopsticks. In collaboration with Kirin Holdings, Meiji University, located in Tokyo, has developed connected chopsticks that modify the taste perceived by means of a slight electrical stimulation on the tongue. We are not talking about an electric shock of course… Depending on whether there are more or fewer sodium chloride ions, we have the impression that a food is more or less salty. If we play on the ions of sodium glutamate, we will have in this case a sweet sensation.

The experiment was conducted with 36 volunteers who were equipped with a small box attached to the wrist and connected to the connected chopsticks. To judge the saltiness, two gels with different salt content – 0.80% for the first and 0.56% for the second, were used. The guinea pigs felt that the salty flavor was equally important with the lower sodium gel.

This is not the first time that this Japanese university has deployed such surprising technological innovations. One of his teachers, Homei Miyashita, hit the headlines in 2021 with the invention of a screen that reproduced the taste of food and that you could lick…