Add electricity for umami
Salt makes everything taste better. Unfortunately, excess salt can cause problems for our bodies down the line, starting with high blood pressure and continuing on to heart disease and strokes. So how do we enjoy our deliciously salty foods without putting ourselves at risk? One answer may be electricity.
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Researchers at Meiji University in Tokyo partnered with food and beverage maker Kirin to develop a set of electric chopsticks to boost the taste of salt in foods without the extra sodium. According to codeveloper and Meiji University professor Homei Miyashita, the device, worn like a watch with a wire attached to one of the chopsticks, “uses a weak electrical current to transmit sodium ions from food, through the chopsticks, to the mouth where they create a sense of saltines,” Reuters said.
In a country like Japan, where a lot of food is made with heavily sodium-based ingredients like miso and soy sauce, the average adult consumes 10 g of salt a day. That’s twice the recommended amount proposed by the World Health Organization. To not sacrifice bland food for better health, this device, which enhances the saltiness of the food consumed by 1.5 times, offers a fairly easy solution to a big public health crisis.
The chopsticks were tested by giving participants reduced-sodium miso soup. They told the researchers that the food was improved in “richness, sweetness, and overall tastiness,” the Guardian said.
Worried about having something electric in your mouth? Don’t worry. Kirin said in a statement that the electricity is very weak and not enough to affect the body.
The chopsticks are still in a prototype stage, but you may be able to get your pair as soon as next year. Until then, maybe be a little mindful of the salt.
Pet poop works in mysterious ways
We usually see it as a burden when our pets poop and pee in the house, but those bodily excretions may be able to tell us something about cancer-causing toxins running rampant in our homes.
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Those toxins, known as aromatic amines, can be found in tobacco smoke and dyes used in make-up, textiles, and plastics. “Our findings suggest that pets are coming into contact with aromatic amines that leach from products in their household environment,” lead author Sridhar Chinthakindi, PhD, of NYU Langone Health, said in a statement from the university. “As these substances have been tied to bladder, colorectal, and other forms of cancer, our results may help explain why so many dogs and cats develop such diseases.”
Tobacco smoke was not the main source of the aromatic amines found in the poop and urine, but 70% of dogs and 80% of cats had these chemicals in their waste. The researchers looked for 30 types of aromatic amines plus nicotine in the sample and found 8. The chemical concentrations were much higher in cats than in dogs, possibly because of differences in exposure and metabolism between the two species, they suggested.
“If [pets] are getting exposed to toxins in our homes, then we had better take a closer look at our own exposure,” said senior author Kurunthachalam Kannan, PhD, of NYU Langone.
So the next time your pet poops or pees in the house, don’t get mad. Maybe they’re just trying to help you out by supplying some easy-to-collect samples.