Inside a small room in Meiji University in Tokyo, a middle-aged man with furrowed brows warily places a spoonful of soup in his mouth. His eyes widen as he swallows. “It certainly feels stronger,” he exclaims in a video for a local news network. His first spoonful had tasted bland, thanks to the low-sodium recipe. The difference was due to a button on the spoon’s handle, which, when powered on, leverages a weak electric current via electrodes embedded in the tip of the spoon to simulate the sodium ion channels on his tongue’s taste receptors. The result: a 50% hike in saltiness. The smart spoon is set to be commercially released in Japan at the end of 2023 by Kirin Holdings, an international beverage and pharma company, and Japan’s second-largest brewery.
Scientists have been working on taste-simulation technologies for years and have artificially generated “virtual” minty, sweet, sour, salty, and bitter flavors, as well as chewy and crunchy textures, via electrode-embedded gadgets and electrical muscle stimulation jaw patches. The difference is that this is the first time a major company has taken virtual-taste tools outside the lab. Potential applications for this tech include therapeutics, gastronomy, and of course, the metaverse.
“We will be able to taste . . . and dine together in the metaverse space,” says Homei Miyashita, the developer of the electric salt spoon and a professor of advanced mathematical sciences at Meiji University. “This is taste AR. . . . It’s an extension and augmentation of the saltiness we perceive from salt in the real world.”
Although the metaverse has yet to see widespread adoption, despite billions of investment dollars, virtual tastings could one day make places like Gordon Ramsay’s metaverse restaurant, Wendy’s Wendyverse, or the Miller Lite Meta Lite bar a lot more interesting. While vision, sound, touch, and smell have been integrated (or are getting there), virtual taste has been the lone holdout.
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