Is it just me, or is this just a little strange?
I don’t know… relying on an artificial tongue to decide if food tastes good seems like technology gone berserk. The article below describes a new device using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) to ‘taste’ and help produce tastier processed foods. I guess it should work, since processed foods are laden with chemicals and artificial flavorings anyway.
It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out that our tastes are influenced by our human moods, cravings, and whether we’re hungry. Because of this, human tasters are deemed unreliable. The eTongue (along with the already developed eNose) reportedly can’t be swayed by moods and notions that human tasters suffer.
I’m far from being a technology poo-pooing Luddite; the technology behind this is fascinating. But at the same time, I’m having a problem letting a machine determine what will taste good to me. Maybe it will decide that earthworms should taste good. I think some of our human emotions need to come into play here.
Also, it brings to mind the prospect of developing totally fake food. The food producers can try almost anything to develop tasty ‘food’ without fear of the frailties of human tasters. We already have artificial meats, usually made from soy, but who says they can’t just raid the chemistry set and create non-organic foods?
Maybe I’m just being paranoid…
‘Magnetic tongue’ ready to help produce tastier processed foods
Published: Wednesday, October 26, 2011 in Mathematics & Economics
The “electronic nose,” which detects odors, has a companion among emerging futuristic “e-sensing” devices intended to replace abilities that once were strictly human-and-animal-only. It is a “magnetic tongue” — a method used to “taste” food and identify ingredients that people describe as sweet, bitter, sour, etc. A report on use of the method to taste canned tomatoes appears in ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Antonio Randazzo, Anders Malmendal, Ettore Novellino and colleagues explain that sensing the odor and flavor of food is a very complex process. It depends not only on the combination of ingredients in the food, but also on the taster’s emotional state. Trained taste testers eliminate some of the variation, but food processors need more objective ways to measure the sensory descriptor of their products. That’s where electronic sensing technologies, like E-noses, come into play.
However, current instruments can only analyze certain food components and require very specific sample preparation. To overcome these shortcomings, Randazzo and Malmendal’s team turned to nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) to test its abilities as “a magnetic tongue.”
The researchers analyzed 18 canned tomato products from various markets with NMR and found that the instrument could estimate most of the tastes assessed by the human taste testers. But the NMR instrument went even farther. By determining the chemical composition, it showed which compound is related to which sensory descriptor. The researchers say that the “magnetic tongue” has good potential as a rapid, sensitive and relatively inexpensive approach for food processing companies to use.
Tags: food, technology