Love salt, but been told you need to cut down on your intake for the sake of your health? You're not alone.
Many people consume too much salt in their diet, leading to high blood pressure and other health issues.
So, would you consider giving your tongue a little electric shock, if it meant you could enjoy that salty taste with fewer health risks?
Scientists at Meiji University and Kirin, a Japanese food and beverage company, have discovered a novel way to enhance the saltiness, and even potentially the savoriness, of low-sodium foods using stimulation of the tongue by a weak electrical current delivered by a special chopstick.
They also believe the concept has applications in other fields, such as stimulating taste as part of a virtual reality experience and have published their research in the journal Frontiers in Virtual Reality
Previous studies have described how introducing a weak electrical current to the tongue can affect the charged ions that make up sodium chloride to either inhibit or enhance saltiness and other taste sensations.
The new paper is the first to investigate the extent to which individuals following a low-sodium diet can use electric taste stimulation to cut back on salt intake.
"Many people consume around twice the salt intake standard recommended by the World Health Organisation," said lead author Yoshinobu Kaji, a master's student in the Graduate School of Advanced Mathematical Sciences at Meiji University.
"This standard cannot be met with a little effort in salt reduction, and a drastic solution is essential. This study is an important approach because it suggests that a 30 per cent reduction in salt can be achieved by electrical stimulation."
Electrified chopsticks
The researchers first gently zapped their own taste buds before testing the effects of the electrified chopsticks on 31 people previously or currently on a low-sodium diet.
Each person tasted and rated the saltiness of several saltwater gel samples that had two different levels of saltiness.
The results showed that electric stimulation enhanced the saltiness of the low-sodium sample, making it comparable to the control sample, which was 40 per cent or more saltier.
More than 80 per cent of subjects said they could tolerate the electric stimulation on a daily basis.
In a second experiment, the participants consumed a low-sodium miso soup, which many found had a better mouthfeel and taste, suggesting that electric taste stimulation may also affect umami, according to the paper. Umami is a fifth sensory taste often described as savoriness.
The long-term goal is to develop a commercially available chopstick-shaped device for daily use by those following a low-sodium diet or trying to reduce their salt intake, according to Kaji.