Record and reproduce taste

In 1877, Thomas Edison invented the gramophone and became the first person to ever record and reproduce his own voice. In 1895, the Edison Company created one of the earliest audio ‘movies’ – a 17-second track in which one man played the violin while two others danced nearby. In other words, it’s been possible for 125 years to record audio and visual scenes and play them fairly high quality. But throughout the history of mankind, there has been no way to capture and reproduce the taste of a food or drink – that is, until last year with the advent of Homei Miyashita’s ‘Taste Display’. The invention by Miyashita, a scientist at Meiji University in Tokyo, is a 21^stcentury analogue of a gramophone – one that plays taste rather than sounds.

Miyashita has a long interest in food and taste. His curiosity about ingredients piqued as a child when his mother wrote a recipe book. He conducted his own research at Meiji University as one of the founders of the Frontier Media Science program, which explores the interface between technology and the human senses. In 2012, he and a former PhD student Hiromi Nakamura (now at the University of Tokyo) developed an ‘electric fork’ that was originally intended to enhance the taste of hospital food – the idea was to make food taste saltier, for example. . , without adding salt, thus avoiding possible adverse health consequences.

It was an early step for Miyashita, who had bigger, more ambitious plans. While the electric fork can make food taste saltier or sourer, the flavor screen can reproduce any fragrance that one might want to conjure up. This is how it works, starting with a bit of anatomy: the human tongue has separate receptors to detect the five basic tastes – sweet, sour, bitter, salty and umami. Miyashita’s device has five different gels, each containing an electrolyte solution that causes the tongue, when it comes in contact with the surface, to feel one of those scents at an intensity that is easily adjustable. Each gel is connected to a separate (extremely weak) electric current, and the associated taste decreases when the current is switched on. A sixth, tasteless gel was also included as a buffer that kept the overall current level – and the accompanying stimulation of the tongue – constant.

By adjusting the current for all six gels, which can be done automatically, the taste of a chocolate milkshake or a loin steak or any other desired treat can be experienced by using this device without any calorie intake.

The Taste Display initially took the form of a rod that looked like a handheld microphone with a surface designed to leak rather than be spoken into. But Miyashita already has an early version of a mask that provides continuous contact with the fragrance-giving surface as part of a virtual reality system. He also developed a “leakable screen” that can be incorporated on a cell phone so that someone, for example, can watch a cooking program while tasting different flavors.

“Or someone who looks at a recipe on a website can find out what the dish tastes like,” he says. ‘We now have smartphones with cameras, screens, microphones and speakers. But we may soon go further and upload and download our tasting experiences. ”

This is a brief introduction to the taste reproduction part of the story, but what about the recording of things? Miyashita currently uses commercial “taste sensors” that provide a quantitative measure of the five flavor components of any food sampled. He developed equations that convert that taste data into a corresponding current for each of the five flavors.

Contemporary taste sensors are bulky machines that make the results rather sluggish. Miyashita is exploring faster, more portable ways of absorbing taste – perhaps through the use of a thermometer-like device that can be immersed in food, which quickly reads out the various flavor components. A portable “salt meter” already exists, and it can also be customized to measure other flavors. He predicts that within ten years we will be able to immediately record and reproduce taste information.

However, eating is about more than just the five basic flavors in their myriad combinations. Smell is also an important part of the tasting experience, and Miyashita is already experimenting with ‘scent displays’. He also looks at the feeling of touch and examines how a particular food feels in your mouth. For this purpose, he works on 3D printing, using not only smooth plastic, but also a range of materials with varying degrees of roughness. “By combining it with our taste research,” he says, “we hope to reflect the texture you feel while eating.”

“But you can only do so much,” he admits. ‘You can watch a travel video, but it probably will not eliminate your desire to visit a foreign country. Listening to a record will also not necessarily satisfy your urge to hear live music. And so it is with taste. Technology can, of course, do amazing things – its laboratory is an excellent example. But there is also something to be said for a good home-cooked meal, says Miyashita, perhaps from the pages of his mother’s recipe book.