Foods high in sugar and salt can be unhealthy, but these additives are too palatable for many people to give up or cut back on significantly. if you do? The student team designed a spoon with a structure that stimulates the taste buds for a sweet taste without adding calories or chemicals. This project follows on from previous work on flavor-enhancing cutlery, including chopsticks that amplify saltiness with a mild electrical current.
Five undergraduate and graduate students wanted to develop a new spoon called Sugarware for people with diabetes and other disorders that affect 11.3% of the US population. Sugar is pretty much off the menu for many people with this condition.
The new spoon has several ridges on its underside that give it more surface area to press against the tongue. The bump is covered with a permanent layer of molecules called ligands. These ligands typically bind to taste cell surface receptor proteins that respond to sugar molecules or artificial sweeteners. The binding triggers a cascade of neural signals that register the sensation of sweetness in the brain. In this way, diners can “stimulate the sweet taste receptors without actually injecting them with sugar or artificial sweeteners,” the team explained at the 2022 Biodesign Sprint. Sugarware earned the designer the runner-up spot in the student category.
Student researchers cite two separate effects. “We took our design inspiration from Korean designer Jinhyun Jeon. “She was experimenting with spoons with similar knobs. [with] How these spoons change and influence the eating experience,” said team member Weiran Tao, a graduate research fellow at New York University.
A study by Jeon et al. focused on how texture affects taste perception. In a past project, Charles Spence, an experimental psychologist at the University of Oxford who wasn’t involved in the Sugarware project, rubbed sandpaper with his fingers while gingering his cookies, coffee, or wine. We found that the taste was evaluated differently than when the surface was rubbed. Spence says he’s unsure as to why, but “the grit in the sandpaper can match the pungency of a ginger biscuit or the grit in your mouth of black coffee.” In the case of , “I suddenly wake up and notice that the texture is different than what I am used to,” and that changes the experience.
Xu said the Sugarware team also looked at a Japanese study by Toyoaki Miyashita and colleagues at Meiji University, who discovered a way to stimulate salt receptors on the tongue. Miyashita’s team worked with Kirin Holdings to develop special chopsticks. A weak electrical current passes through the novel blade, displacing sodium ions in a bite of food and stimulating the salt receptors on the tongue. Researchers reported that their chopsticks could increase diners’ perception of saltiness by up to 1.5 times. It employs a microcurrent-based approach.
These ideas are similar to Sugarware in that the user uses all the equipment to enhance the taste without actually consuming salt or sugar. “But with Sugarware, the mechanism of stimulating the taste buds is completely different,” he says. Instead of electricity, it uses molecules that stimulate texture and taste buds.
In addition to salt and sugar, Sugarware researchers were also interested in reducing the need for artificial sweeteners. These compounds are incorporated into many foods and “consumed by hundreds of millions of people around the world with the idea that they produce the sweetest sensation without the price of calories,” says Israel’s Weizmann Science. says Eran Elinahu, a microbiome researcher at the institute. student project. However, these chemicals affect the body. In 2014, Elinav’s team fed mice the artificial sweetener saccharin and found that the gut microbiota of rodents interacted with the sweetener. “These interactions counter-intuitively [the animals’] This is a mechanism that affects conditions, including diabetes. Other studies have shown that humans who consume some sugar substitutes also experience altered gut microbiota and spikes in blood sugar levels. “Artificial sweeteners are clearly not inert in the human body,” says Elinaf. There is a possibility
The idea is “very creative,” says Paola de Almeida, one of the Biodesign Sprint judges and global director of corporate innovation at candy maker Mars. However, for a product to be commercially successful, it will require significant changes in consumer behavior. “Now we’re saying, ‘Use this tool,'” says de Almeida, instead of adding regular sugar or artificial sweeteners.
It remains to be seen whether the flavor-enhancing cookware will take off. Some of the prizes in include instruction from Mars staff.
But if you want to experiment with cutlery and flavors now, you don’t need a specially designed fork or knife. Previous research has shown that the weight, color and shape of common utensils can change the way we perceive the taste of food. Grab a variety of cutlery and hold an independent taste test. Some spoons may be sweeter than others, even without bumps.
