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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Is Kirin’s Electric Spoon an Early Signal of a Tech-Powered Eating Trend?

Japanese food giant Kirin announced this week that it is selling an ‘electric salt spoon’ that amplifies food’s saltiness by applying an electric current to the tongue. According to the product’s co-developer, the product works by using the current to draw more sodium into contact with the tongue, which in turn enhances the perceived saltiness of the food.

Kirin plans to sell 200 of these spoons for 19,800 yen ($127) online this month and will begin selling them at retail in Japan in June. The company hopes to start selling them outside Japan next year and hopes it can reach 1 million unit sales within five years.

A spoon that zaps your tongue to amp up the flavor may seem a bit strange, but it’s not entirely surprising. Researchers have known for years that applying electric current changes how we perceive flavor. Over the past decade, Japanese scientists have been experimenting with using electrical and thermal probes to stimulate muscles and trick the human brain into believing it was tasting food that wasn’t really there. And in 2020, a US-based startup called SpoonTEK released an electric spoon that sent electric currents to the tongue to enhance flavor.

Could a big food company releasing an electric salt-enhancing spoon be an early sign of a trend toward technology-powered eating? Maybe. Assistive technology for helping those who can’t eat independently has been around for decades. Companies like Panasonic have been prototyping devices like the DeliSofter, a pressure cooker-like appliance that softens food for those with eating disorders involving swallowing and chewing, in recent years.

But these tech-powered utensils seem to be taking things in a new direction by using technology to enhance flavor itself. More specifically, this technology connects to our bodies in a way that changes how our minds process flavor and perceive taste. While tech-powered eating today involves only a few early concepts, such as spoons or chopsticks, how long will it be until we see insertables aimed at changing flavor perception, especially if they can encourage behavior changes (like eating less sodium) that could lead to healthier outcomes?

My guess is within the next decade.

Does The Shape Of Your Spoon Impact Taste? Apparently, Yes.

We write a lot about high-tech solutions to change the way food is cooked and consumed, but there is interesting, science-driven work being done to explore how design and form impact food taste as well. Fast Co Design writes about the work of designer Andreas Fabian – who has a PhD in spoons – and scientist Charles Michel to use design and scientific principals to enhance how cutlery can improve the perception of food’s taste.

Together they created the Goûte, a glass spoon modeled using biomimicry, the process of using design in nature to inspire manmade products. In the case of Michel and Fabian, their natural inspiration was the thing all humans use at one time or another to taste food – the finger.

The two began to think about the intimate experiences people can have with food when they’re unconcerned about proper manners—licking your finger while cooking, licking your plate when finished. What if they could create a new kind of utensil that mimicked that feeling, bringing a new level of mindfulness and joy to eating?

After developing the Goûte, the team paired up with Oxford University’s Crossmodal Research Laboratory to test the utensil’s impact on flavor perception. Participants used both spoons and the finger-inspired tool and found “participants reported perceiving the food as tasting significantly better than when eating with a conventional spoon.” People reported that the yogurt even tasted sweeter when using the Goûte as compared with the spoon.

The processing of using low-tech design principals to change the way food tastes is a fascinating undertaking. You can read more about the Goûte and the impact of design on taste here.