Stressed at work and feeling your blood pressure rise? People all over the world are told by their doctors to try for a low-sodium (钠) diet to treat high blood pressure or other diseases, but there's no denying that salt makes food taste good. Fortunately, Japanese researchers at Tokyo's Meiji University and the manufacturer Kirin have developed high-tech chopsticks that enhance salty tastes, potentially helping those who need to reduce sodium in their diets.
These wired-up chopsticks are actually part of a device that the researchers say can enhance the salty flavor of low-sodium foods. And when they were tested on participants for the first time, results showed that the high-tech chopsticks increase perceived (察觉到) saltiness in foods by about 1.5 times.
According to the research team, the basic principle is that the extra salty flavor is perceived due to extremely weak electric currents conveyed directly into the mouth through the tip of one of the chopsticks. Scientists have apparently been using this kind of weak electricity to play with flavors in the lab for years, but these chopsticks in particular are set to adjust the activity of ions (离子) in sodium chloride (table salt), which enhances salty flavor.
And do these chopsticks work as expected? To verify the effect of the new chopsticks, the researchers conducted an experiment on a total of 36 participants aged 40 to 65, all of whom were eating a low-sodium diet. If nothing else, one thing was clear: participants using the chopsticks tasted more salt than they did without. Results show that they even thought that low-sodium food eaten with the high-tech chopsticks tasted saltier than regular food made with an average amount of sodium, and eaten with normal chopsticks.
The chopsticks aren't on store shelves quite yet, but with promising results, people around the world who are unhappily devoted to a low-sodium diet might just be excited for any updates to come!
