Device can make broccoli taste like chocolate

[UM-Bot]

A new invention called Taste Buddy has the potential to make any food taste like any other food.

http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/299799/device-can-make-broccoli-taste-like-chocolate

[spartan max2]

Everyone cold be the healthiest people ever haha

[Lucas Cooper Merrin]

This aint new! Willy wonka had this nailed down years ago

[Skulduggery]

Not for me. I love the taste of broccoli. No joke. I can only do chocolate on rare occasions and only if dark.

[Parsec]

Yeah,  broccoli taste great! 

 

Anyway, that children don't like the taste o vegetables is a false myth,  or rather a culturally delimited one.

It really depends on how parents feed their children. 

In UK I regularly see two year old babies pushed around in their strollers drinking soft drinks from glasses bigger than them and eating regularly at the Mac. 

Heck,  the healthiest place where they eat is Greggs. 

 

In Italy for instance, although unfortunately things are changing there as well, we are generally used to a different diet,  with less processed food,  especially when we prepare it for our children.  

The "no veggies"  problem is more a tv and movie thing,  where of course they reflect US habits. 

 

I know Indians that have never tasted meat,  of any kind. 

They grew up eating only vegetables their whole life. 

And never complained. 

 

It's a given that if a child can choose between a sweet food (candies,  milk chocolate) and a mild flavoured one like a carrot or a courgette, he will go for the sweeter, but this is very different than not liking at all. 

Edited October 14, 2016 by Parsec
Edit to add

[Parsec]

So now we won't be able to notice that we are in the matrix because food will always taste right? 

[Vorg]

This is a really great thing. Changing tofu to taste like steak could help save lives as people could eat healthier. I'm all for it.

[jarjarbinks]

maybe it will end up messing with your glands and everything will taste like sh#t after a while, i mean litteraly.

[paperdyer]

14 minutes ago, South Alabam said:

This is a really great thing. Changing tofu to taste like steak could help save lives as people could eat healthier. I'm all for it.

True, and poison could be made to taste like steak as well. Execute a prisoner on death row with his last meal. and he'd actually enjoy it!

[Skulduggery]

Hell, actually I'm not too fond of sweet things. My diet is usually things like broccoli, tuna, okra, radishes, hot peppers, oysters, fresh fish (scaled but not cooked), and usually the sweetest thing I'll eat is maybe an occasional starfruit.
Why do people like sweet stuff? That's the biggest mystery in the world to me.

[Goodf3llow]

I'll believe it when I taste it...

[Vorg]

If they could make liver to taste like filet mignon, I seriously doubt I would eat it.

[GlitterRose]

I already like broccoli, but I'm considering the implications. If I could make healthy food taste like chocolate, I'd certainly eat more of it. 

[GlitterRose]

5 hours ago, South Alabam said:

This is a really great thing. Changing tofu to taste like steak could help save lives as people could eat healthier. I'm all for it.

That would be awesome.

[GlitterRose]

6 hours ago, Parsec said:

So now we won't be able to notice that we are in the matrix because food will always taste right? 

I was just thinking about how no one actually knew what chicken tasted like in the Matrix, because so many things tasted the same.

[GlitterRose]

5 hours ago, jarjarbinks said:

maybe it will end up messing with your glands and everything will taste like sh#t after a while, i mean litteraly.

Don't be a killjoy. We all know that in 5 years they're gonna find out it's a toxic carcinogen. We just wanna live in happyland for a little while.

Happyland...

Where tofu tastes like steak and lima beans taste like chocolate.

Edited October 15, 2016 by ChaosRose

[+DieChecker]

This would only work for me if they could fix the smell at the same time. Even if the broccoli/liver/asparagus tasted great, the smell would prevent me from getting it anywhere near my mouth.

[rashore]

While it's interesting that they figured out that heat and electricity can stimulate taste buds to sweet and salty... it's a far cry from making one food taste like another. And I have to imagine it's difficult to eat while holding a metal tab on your tongue.

[Parsec]

On 16/10/2016 at 6:14 PM, rashore said:

While it's interesting that they figured out that heat and electricity can stimulate taste buds to sweet and salty... it's a far cry from making one food taste like another. And I have to imagine it's difficult to eat while holding a metal tab on your tongue.

Agreed, but this is also a possible step forward towards a real food replicator! 

[rashore]

9 minutes ago, Parsec said:

Agreed, but this is also a possible step forward towards a real food replicator! 

How do you figure? Would replicated food have the tec in it to distribute heat and electrical impulses? Or do you think this very basic research could potentially lead to some cool ion tec? Or both?

And it's one thing to trigger taste bud receptors. Neat fact- all taste buds can taste everything, but there are greater and lesser concentrations of receptor cells that are sensitive to specific molecular and ion interactions. That's why there seems to be regions in the tongue. And why sometimes when your tongue gets overwhelmed by one thing, like bitter or sweet- because then all the taste buds are chiming in on it.

Another huge hurdle is scent- scent makes up for more of what we taste than our taste buds do. That's why when we are stuffed up, flavors are muted or icky. Heh, I wrote out a final paper of the interactions of the mouth and nose for my food chemistry class. It's an interesting subject actually. There's way more going on with food and how our skull processes it than what one might imagine. And I wrote that paper years ago, this tec really is a breakthrough.

It's akin to when eye doctors figuring out rods and cones, and what registers with them. I don't necessarily see this going food replicator... yet. But I can definitely see it's potential to other applications.

Like dental plates and inserts. Quite often as we get older and start losing our teeth, we also start losing our taste buds. I could see dental implants to help with this. Or with patients that have cancer or other illnesses that require treatment that deadens the taste buds- temporary inserts to help fire up what's there. Like invisible braces, but made of ????