Electric fork makes food more salty

Salty potato chips and French fries. Salt on an egg or in bread, sausages, bacon, and sliced meat. Salt is omnipresent in our food, and many people consider it an indispensable flavour enhancer. However, too much salt could harm your health, causing high blood pressure due to the sodium of the salt.

Scientists from the University of Tokyo have created an electric fork, which can produce a taste of salt in food via weak electric impulses from a battery. Ordinary table salt is sodium chloride – or NaCl. When NaCl encounters the tongue, it is dissolved into the ions of Na+ and Cl-, which are electrically charged particles. According to recent research, it is the Na+ ions of the salt that make the taste buds grasp the taste, which we consider salty.