Scientists Discover Way To Transmit Taste of Lemonade Over Internet (vice.com)

schwit1 quotes a report from VICE: With the use of electrodes and sensors -- and zero lemons -- a group of researchers at the University of Singapore have announced that they can convince you that you're drinking lemonade, even if it's just water. Plus, they can send you a glass of lemonade virtually over the internet. In an experiment that involved 13 tasters, the subjects' taste buds were stimulated using electricity from receiving electrodes; LED lights mimicked a lemony color. Some were convinced that the water they were drinking was, in fact, almost as sour as lemonade. According to researcher Nimesha Ranasinghe, the experiment proved that taste can be shared online: "People are always posting pictures of drinks on social media -- what if you could upload the taste as well? That's the ultimate goal." Each of the subjects was given a tumbler filled with a liquid that was either cloudy white, green, or yellow. They were told to place their tongues on the rim of the tumbler before sipping. Then they took a taste and rated the beverage on appearance and taste. Some of the liquids were plain water and some were lemonade. "We're working on a full virtual cocktail with smell, taste, and color all covered. We want to be able to create any drink." Why would anyone want to drink a virtual lemonade? Advocates of virtual eating say that virtual foods can replace foods that are bad for you, that you may be allergic to, or that you shouldn't eat because of a medical condition.

Comments

Re:Researcher

[gl4ss]

well. stimulating taste buds is the thing here.

not "sending lemonade over the internet" or some stupid journo shit like that. it doesnt obviously matter where the data for the signals comes from, but stimulating the taste buds with electrodes is the real thing here.

Different organs

[DrYak]

Giving a dead serious response to an obvious joke, but...

How about caramel, or blueberries, or carrots, or ketchup, or seafood.....

The tongue is an extremely limited organ in sensing capacity.
Basically it can detect sweet (presence of small molecule with a surface vaguely shaped like glucose), salt (basiclly "there are ions here"), acid/sour (simplistic pH) and umame (detects if there are animo acids in the mix).
that's about it.
and due to their function "satly" (basically a ion flux) and "pH" (bascially a specialised ion flux) are the easiest to simulate with electrodes (cause a flux of electricity, i.e.: ions when in a liquid medium like saliva), so that's why they went for "shitty cheap lemonade" (basically citric acid/citrate sodium with some tasteless yellow dye) instead of anything else more complex.

The organ which is responsible to detect that caramel is in fact caramel and not only sweet with a touch of salty is the nose.
(In addition of sampling air as it goes by (= sense of smell), the nose can sample small molecule that are present inside the mouth cavity and diffuse to the nose thorugh the back or over the humid surface (= sense of taste, complementing what the tongue is doing).
There are a huge amount of different receptors, enabling you nose to detects the shape of an incredible amount of different small molecules (usually some fatty acids, but lots of others too).

To create a realistic simulation of blueberry flavor you'll need to stimulate all the various receptors inside the nose that detects shapes present on the various volatile component found in blueblerries.
(Which is incidently what the food industry is also trying : find a few dead cheap stuff, that stimulates the nose in the right way to make you things you're tasting which has spent time growing on plant being taken care of, instead of tasting whatever was the cheapest compatible chemical)

In theory, there's no fundamental technological reason why it shouldn't work, given a sufficiently fine electrode matrix, that can pinpoint the various chemical receptors precisely enough (it's "just" an engineering problem).
(There's no new hidden tech to be discovered in doing it).

In practice, it's going to be extremely complex just to build and test the appropriate electrode array. It's going to cost a lot, not bring anything new to research, and not do anything that can't already be done much cheaper and simpler by blowing the correct dosage of small chemicals into the nose.

And over all, TFA is also a measure of the gullibility of the brain : giving a liquid that is more or less the correct colour (yellow. done by LEDs here or by adding color dyes in the industry) and vaguely stimulates the taste buds in the right way (salty acidic) and the person will be fooled into thinking that they are drinking lemonades made out of actual lemons.
(Which is incidently, again, what the food industry is doing, but with chemicals instead of electronics. Can't get the blueberry mix precise enough ? Well... add some deep blue/purple paint, make sure it's sweat and a bit acidic and you're goign to fool enough gullible customers. Some of them have never even seen an actual blue berry anyway, they won't notice).