Electric Spoon from Japan Makes Food Taste Salty
How much salt do you like to put on your food?
We know that salt makes food taste better. And our bodies need a small amount of salt to keep a good balance between water and minerals.
However, we also know that too much salt is bad for us — it can increase the risk of heart disease, high blood pressure and having a stroke.
The bad news is that a lot of people are eating too much salt. In Japan, people eat on average about 10 grams of it a day — which is double the amount the World Health Organization recommends.
But the good news is that there may now be an answer to this problem: an electric spoon that makes food taste saltier than it really is!
Japanese drinks company Kirin Holdings has released the "Electric Salt Spoon" — a spoon that uses a weak electric current to increase the taste of salt in food by about one and half times. The company developed the spoon with the help of the scientist Homei Miyashita, a professor at Meiji University.
Kirin said it developed the Electric Salt Spoon for people who want to have a healthy low-salt diet, but find it difficult because of the bland taste. In 2021, Kirin surveyed people who had reduced the amount of salt in their diet, and found that 80% said they weren't happy with the taste of food with less salt.
Kirin has also been working on an electric bowl and electric chopsticks. However, the company decided to release an electric spoon first, because in another survey of people who were trying to reduce salt in their diet, ramen noodles and miso soup were the two foods that people said they most wanted to enjoy with a stronger salty taste.
