Taste+: Digitally Enhancing Taste Sensations of Food and Beverages

PubDate: November 2014

Teams: New York University；National University of Singapor

Writers: Nimesha Ranasinghe；Kuan-Yi Lee；Gajan Suthokumar；Ellen Yi-Luen Do

PDF: Taste+: Digitally Enhancing Taste Sensations of Food and Beverages

Abstract

n recent years, digital media technologies expand horizons into non-traditional sensory modalities, for instance, the sense of taste. This demonstration presents `taste+,’ which digitally improves the taste sensations of food and beverages without additional flavoring ingredients. It primarily utilizes weak and controlled electrical pulses on the human tongue to enhance sourness, saltiness, and bitterness of food or beverages. Taste+ consists of two prototype utensils, a bottle and a spoon. Both utensils have embedded electronic control modules to achieve enhanced taste sensations. These modules apply controlled electrical pulses on the tongue through silver electrodes attached to the mouth pieces. Furthermore, different superimposed colors symbolize distinct taste sensations, lemon green represents sour, ocean blue is salty, red for red wine bitter. The initial experimental results suggested that sourness and saltiness are the main sensations that could be evoked while bitterness has comparatively mild responses. Furthermore, we also observed several mixed sensations such as salty-sour together.