During the COIVD-19 lockdowns and social distancing, every generation has increased the use of their devices to inform and distract more than ever before. Wouldn’t it be great if our devices could encompass all of our senses? Well, that time is coming. Homei Miyashita a researcher at Meiji University in Japan has developed the Norimaki Synthesizer which can make the tongue sense taste without eating anything.
It was once thought that the tongue had different regions with concentrations of specific taste buds for each taste. Now we know that there are five basic tastes are sweet, sour (or acidic), salty, bitter, and umami. Bitter flavors are sharp, like coffee, unsweetened chocolate, or the peel of an orange or lemon. Umami is derived from the Japanese word for a pleasant savory taste, was added to the basic tastes group in 1990.
Taste buds have a chemical reaction to food
Taste buds have tiny openings that take in very small amounts of whatever we’re eating. Special “receptor cells” in the taste buds can then have a chemical reaction to the food, creating one of five basic tastes. The way these basic tastes combine creates the overall flavor of the food we’re eating.
SVCOnline explains a better understanding of how the tongue works is crucial to the new device. In order to trick your tongue, the device uses electrolytes inserted into five gels that trigger the five different tastes when they make contact with the human tongue. Gizmodo reports the color-coded gels, made from agar formed in the shape of long tubes to create tastes. The device uses:
Glycine to create the taste of sweet,- Citric acid for acidic,
- Sodium chloride for salty,
- Magnesium chloride for bitter, and
- Glutamic sodium for savory umami.
The taste device
When the device is pressed against the tongue, the user experiences all five tastes at the same time. But, by using a small box with sliding controls the amount of different tastes can be lowered, creating different flavors. Sadly, it can’t produce the effect of spicy foods.
To create the different flavors the device is wrapped in copper foil so that when it’s held in hand and touched to the surface of the tongue, it forms an electrical circuit through the human body, facilitating a technique known as electrophoresis.
Electrophoresis is a process that moves molecules in a gel when an electrical current is applied. In this case, this process causes the ingredients in the agar tubes to move away from the tongue end of the tube, reducing the ability to taste them. It’s a subtractive process that selectively removes tastes to create a specific flavor profile – from gummy bears to sushi.
The device’s creator, Homei Miyashita, was inspired to create his “taste display” by experiments that proved our eyes can be tricked into seeing something that technically doesn’t exist. He wondered if the red, green, or blue pixels that make up the screens on your smartphone, PC, and TV could fool the eye, could he create something that could fool the tongue? Mr. Miyashita used a similar “pixel” approach o trick the tongue.
In his abstract, Professor Miyashita acknowledged the 2011 research of Hiromi Nakamura, who achieved “augmented gustation” by sending electrical charges through chopsticks, forks, and straws to create tastes humans could not perceive solely with their tongues.
Smell-O-Vision
Other inventors have tried to expand the senses for the media. In 1959, Charles Weiss, a public relations executive, created AromaRama. AromaRama distributed scents of horses, grass, exploding firecrackers, incense, and burning torches through the theater’s air-conditioning system during the first showing of “Behind the Great Wall.” But the NYT panned the movie, “Check off the novel experience as… a stunt. The artistic benefit of it is here demonstrated to be nil.”
The next year, inventor Hans Laube introduced an improved Smell-O-Vision with the movie “Scent of Mystery” which was augmented by smells such as freshly baked bread, wine, an ocean breeze, or a skunk delivered through beneath-the-seat tubes. Certain smells offered clues to imminent activity on the screen. But viewers complained of uneven or delayed distribution of smells, and the distracting noises of viewers struggling to sniff each scent. For fans and critics, the movie was a stinker. Famed comedian Henry Youngman quipped, “I didn’t understand the picture. I had a cold.”
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It’s called a taste display because it was inspired by the way RGB pixels accumulate on a screen form an image of something that isn’t there. These electronic “taste pixels” can be manipulated to simulate any taste. Why? No idea. – But there will be an app for that too!
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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
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