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‘Electric’ chopsticks that make food seem more salty

theguardian.com

131–139 of 139 posts

Re: ‘Electric’ chopsticks that make food seem more salty

#131
post #41

I am a Japanese resident. I am not sure how the local people will react to it commercially. So much of the homestyled food goes with traditional cookware. People always are curious to try out things like this - but fall back to age-old practices. I won't be surprised if people continue using their wooden or ceramic chopsticks and this thing becomes a novelty item in upscale department stores. Consider smoked and deep…

Exactly. I just posted this in another thread. It's a study on the link between high sodium intake(i.e. pickled foods like kimchi) and stomach cancer(5th most common cancer): https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2021.80122... I don't expect Koreans to stop eating kimchi anytime soon.

The effect size is also tiny in absolute numbers. With a base rate of 0.004 and a relative risk of 1.28 it would take what, 1000 people reducing their intake to prevent one case of cancer?

Re: ‘Electric’ chopsticks that make food seem more salty

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You call it "luck", but that's what I meant by people really don't understand the risks, I don't think it's luck at all - Doctors make lots of recommendations based on broad trends, but they don't really understand an individual person's risk.

Isn't that like saying someone who won the lottery wasn't lucky, we just don't understand the individual person's chances to win? Like in some way it makes sense but for the purposes of actually deciding whether to recommend whether someone should buy a lottery ticket you can do quite well by looking at the broad trends.

It's closer to saying that someone's successful startup where they used X counter-intuitive strategy was "luck".

Perhaps they were lucky but it's also possible that conventional wisdom on X is wrong.

Re: ‘Electric’ chopsticks that make food seem more salty

#133
Oh dear, what happens if one of those electric chopsticks touches one of one's tooth filling?

Anyone who has had the unfortunate experience of accidentally chewing a bit of aluminum foil will know what I mean - pain arising from even the minutest ionic charge produced by the foil can be excruciatingly painful.

Perhaps these chopsticks should come with a warning about not using them if you've a mouth full of fillings.

Re: ‘Electric’ chopsticks that make food seem more salty

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that like saying someone who won the lottery wasn't lucky, we just don't understand the individual person's chances to win? Like in some way it makes sense but for the purposes of actually deciding whether to recommend whether someone should buy a lottery ticket you can do quite well by looking at the broad trends.

It's closer to saying that someone's successful startup where they used X counter-intuitive strategy was "luck". Perhaps they were lucky but it's also possible that conventional wisdom on X is wrong.

Yeah but the difference is we don't peer review large medical studies on successful startup strategies. We're talking about biomedical research and oncology, not "conventional wisdom"

Re: ‘Electric’ chopsticks that make food seem more salty

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I just posted this in another thread. It's a study on the link between high sodium intake(i.e. pickled foods like kimchi) and stomach cancer(5th most common cancer): https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2021.80122... I don't expect Koreans to stop eating kimchi anytime soon.

The effect size is also tiny in absolute numbers. With a base rate of 0.004 and a relative risk of 1.28 it would take what, 1000 people reducing their intake to prevent one case of cancer?

In a population of 300 million, like the US, that's 300,000 prevented cancer cases. We reported about 5x as many new cases last year.

I'm not saying we should mandate reduced sodium intake or anything, but having the ability to reduce cancer incidence by 20% is huge. Not just in terms of raw economics, but the societal impact of not losing grandma or grandpa unnecessarily is something we can't easily quantify.

I doubt anyone in the US in the 90s expected smoking rates to drop the way they did, but it is possible to discourage unhealthy behaviors that have externalized costs, like smoking tobacco or eating garbage.

Re: ‘Electric’ chopsticks that make food seem more salty

#137
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's closer to saying that someone's successful startup where they used X counter-intuitive strategy was "luck". Perhaps they were lucky but it's also possible that conventional wisdom on X is wrong.

Yeah but the difference is we don't peer review large medical studies on successful startup strategies. We're talking about biomedical research and oncology, not "conventional wisdom"

The controls and reproducibility of studies on human nutrition may not be as rock solid as you think they are. The conventional wisdom on nutrition has changed radically since many doctors, including one in my direct family went through medical school.

There are also considerable distortions due to who is paying for the research.

Re: ‘Electric’ chopsticks that make food seem more salty

#138

Would this be satisfying though? Most enjoyment of food comes from swallowing it. I’m guessing it doesn’t last as a sensation.

I for one like to taste my food before swallowing.

I don’t think the positive sensation of eating would work if your food ceased to be tasty right before swallowing

Re: ‘Electric’ chopsticks that make food seem more salty

#139
post #60
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I meant "Dweeb". "Weeb" is just a subcategory of it.

As far as I know the two aren't connected (outside of the spelling overlap), but if you like it this way that's fine.

both describe losers is a connection
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