Scientists Discover Way To Transmit Taste of Lemonade Over Internet (vice.com) 95
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.
Meh. (Score:2)
email: Go buy a lemon at the store. Taste it.
You mean like this? (Score:2)
You mean like this? [staticflickr.com]
_ Been done !! (Score:2)
Hasn't this been done? >_
I seem to remember years ago somebody building a smell "printer" -- Smell-o-vision or something like that.
>_< Been done !! (Score:2)
oh yeah - it works better when the HTML is escaped. >_<
darn it.
Re:Researcher (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:1)
This is not the oldest such proof [nih.gov]
This is something that has been known since the early days of charging Leiden jars with a Van de Graaff generator and then licking the leads. One of the early researchers went so far as to directly stimulate his optic, olfactory, and auditory senses (that's the citation I was trying to find, but stumbled on this recent one first).
Re: (Score:1)
uhh this is a crowd that has supposedly learnt about stuff like missing parts of the brain affects personality so all that is a given.
HOWEVER.. stimulating the brain directly hasn't really been actually going forward in past 30 years all that much. it's pretty damn complex.
Re:Researcher (Score:4, Funny)
There are few things I would rather researchers be working on than simulating tastes and smells of foods. When they can make broccoli taste like pizza I can cancel my gym membership.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not exactly the same, but there are pizzas with crusts that are made out of vegetable (crumbs) for ~50%. I know that actually sounds terrible, but those pizzas taste surprisingly like normal pizza. And I don't mean that as in 'these vegan fake meat sausages taste like normal sausages' (they don't, stop saying that, they taste like rubber).
These guys make them in the Netherlands: http://magioni.com/en/products... [magioni.com]
Re: (Score:3)
Would a nice glass of Pizza-ade do instead?
wow (Score:2)
stimulating two whole things, sour, which is shit lemonade and sweet, with nothing between
hey lick a 9 volt battery and it taste like salt, where's my millions of dollars to jerk off at work for years on end
Re: wow (Score:2, Funny)
That's not what you're doing at work all day? Could've fooled me.
- your boss
Damn hackers (Score:2)
digitally substituting the flavoring of one yellow liquid for another!
Come to think of it, this would've been the perfect time for Slashdot's resident, "frosty piss," poster.
Re: (Score:2)
Thank you, I hoped someone mentioned frosty piss.
This site really hasn't had the same character since Dice... glad a few of us from the first decade of /. are still left.
Re: (Score:2)
It's kind of funny how we almost come to miss the trolling that at the time we didn't care so much for...
Any kid knows this (Score:2)
Different organs (Score:5, Informative)
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).
Re: (Score:2)
You can do smell with just chemicals, but you can't do taste with just chemicals delivered to the nose, not least because much of what we call taste is actually smell. Also, while the tongue may be pretty simple, you can still tell the difference (if you already know it) between real and fake flavors.
Re: (Score:2)
and due to their function "satly" (basically a ion flux) and "pH" (bascially a specialised ion flux) asiest to simulate with electrodes
Silly question, is this why licking batteries taste the way they do?
Licking batteries (Score:2)
and due to their function "satly" (basically a ion flux) and "pH" (bascially a specialised ion flux) asiest to simulate with electrodes
Silly question, is this why licking batteries taste the way they do?
Bascially yes.
Those receptors are the most sensitive to the type of activity that happens when licking batteries.
Re: (Score:2)
Ha, and people say Slashdot is just a bunch of arguing nits and you don't learn anything new.
Cheers, that was very interesting. :-)
Early April fool ? (Score:1)
If you like lemonade... (Score:1)
...this is great news! If you don't though you are SOL.
Re: (Score:2)
When life gives you the synthesizing ability for lemons...
What about bias? (Score:3)
Here's what I'm wondering: clearly, all of the 13 participants in this study had consumed lemonade of some variety before. The summary states, however, that the researchers wish to use this to allow people who are allergic to a food to experience it. So my question is this:
Say you take a group of people who have never tasted something before due to an allergy or other medical condition. You tell them that what they're drinking is the thing they've never tasted. How do they know it would even still work?
Re: (Score:1)
Re: What about bias? (Score:1)
Nobody who was involved in applying for grants for this research believes any benefit to society will come of it whatsoever. They know we know the whole thing is bullshit, but they also know when the fix that only a figleaf is required to justify a grant. The taste-for-those-who-cant angle is for the humanists and the cocktail-over-the-internet angle is for the capitalists.
Re: (Score:2)
... clearly, all of the 13 participants in this study had consumed lemonade of some variety before. ...
Yeah, I'm too lazy to RTFA, but from the bad summary your point sounds right on. Using LEDs to simulate the yellow color is half if not most of the "taste" that has been received.
I remember a while ago my wife made frosting and added pink food coloring. We could all swear that it tasted like strawberry frosting. But we did not add any strawberry flavoring whatsoever. The mere color of pink makes us expect to taste something strawberryish, to such an extent that it becomes impossible to separate out our sub
Great, let's not throw a Lemon Party (Score:5, Funny)
Please. Don't.
Amazing Horse? (Score:1)
Well, I better not show you where the lemonade is made. /sweet, sweet lemonade
oh oh (Score:2)
If you think goatse was nasty before...
Two girls, one cup - videoconference version (Score:1)
[link removed for violation of company policy] Please collect your personal belongings and report to HR immediately.
A Hubert J. Farnsworth worthy invention (Score:3)
The Smell-O-Scope [wikia.com] can't be far behind.
Re: (Score:2)
Behind? We have already have smellovision. Demonstration units have been shown off at recent game expos
No, we don't already have smellovision. There were two different companies demonstrating one at GDC 2000. Guess how many of them made it to market?
Wake me up when you can actually buy a smellovision product at Fry's. Not Micro Center, either. Fry's.
Re: (Score:2)
Lame. The Smell-O-Scope is a precision instrument that can pick up the smell, and pin-point the location, of dog crap anywhere in the know universe.
*totally different*
Call me (Score:2)
when they can transmit sex over the internet.
technology isn't necessary ... (Score:2)
I can do the same thing with hypnosis. I can convince you that piss tastes like merlot or chardonnay. I can encourage your mind to think almost anything about anything. In a group situation (such as a theater or arena) I can help thousands to believe they are drinking lemonade instead of water. Your mind is doing the work, I am simply a guide. Your mind has great potential that scientists and psychologists have yet to explore. It is frustrating that science refuses to examine hypnosis because it defies any
Didn't expect to see this viral garbage here too (Score:2)
When life gives you electrons (Score:2)
You make... lemonade?
Virtual Drunk (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I actually saw this done - as a wee lad of 10(ish). My father and an uncle were settling in for an evening of Vodka and tipsy/drunken fun. Something was said that irritated my aunt. She quietly, out of sight of the 2 'grown' men, poured out the Vodka and refilled the 2 bottles with water. We set around and burst into laughter all evening as Dad and Uncle Buddy got totally pissed on 'water' and orange juice - - - rofl.
Re: (Score:2)
This happens, placebo effect works as good with alcohol as with other drugs. Not just that, different cultures have different behaviours associated to alcohol intake, and placebo drunk people tend to take the behaviours from their culture, which appears to imply that many (although not all) of the effects of alcohol are cultural.
Beer and Work (Score:2)
What's the internet got to do with it? (Score:2)
They're locally lighting up the water and attaching electrodes to the taster's tongue - neither of which requires the internet at all (just a local machine to control things). Yes, the internet can store the light/electrode "recipes" so there's a central repository, but I fail to see how the internet is an important part of it (after all, I suspect all the possible drink/light/electrode combinations would fit on a small USB stick).
Old news (Score:1)
Internet bad taste? Old news.
Re: (Score:1)
"I smell a troll" will be literal now.
Wake me when it can do this: (Score:2)
Obligatory Addams Family reference: Make is taste like real girl scouts.
Cool... (Score:1)
Of course (Score:1)
Could this cure my Wife of her soda addiction (Score:2)
So long as she thinks she is drinking gallons of mountain dew and not getting off the couch?
Obligatory (Score:2)