‘Electric’ chopsticks that make food seem more salty • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by ineedasername » Tue, Apr 19, 2022, 6:29 PM UTC

postingposts wrote: post #84

ineedasername wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many thousands of universities. They can't all be familiar. Those that most consistently produce quality research (or have the best PR) will be well known. Getting there? That's a bit of a chicken or the egg problem: Media outlets aren't going to want to bog down a headline with unrecognizable names-- fewer clicks. Arguably worse for the research too since. When it is noticed, it will be linked better to th…

There are thousands of sodas, and you know what Coca-Cola is.

I don't think that contradicts what I wrote-- it's an example of it.

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

#102

Post by hollosi » Tue, Apr 19, 2022, 6:30 PM UTC

This is probably less invention, more marketing.

Manipulating ions requires a lot of current. Drop an AA battery to a soup and nothing remarkable happens quickly, but lick the same battery and you will definitely feel it immediately.

If you do it while something sour/salty is in your mouth, your tongue may get confused, since it's only prepared to detect 5 flavors plus hot and cold, and it may simply assigns the extra feeling to the strongest sour/salty/umami taste currently experienced.

The electronics is probably just to cut the current when the two chopsticks touch to prevent short circuit.

There are similar articles from a few years ago, like this: https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a15702/simulatin...

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

#103

Post by Johnny555 » Tue, Apr 19, 2022, 6:48 PM UTC

srvmshr wrote: post #98

Johnny555 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider smoked and deep fried food items. Universally, we have evidence they are connected to cardiovascular diseases and cancers. Or that raw uncooked meat could be risky. Yet, the sashimi, basashi, tempura, and various grilled item food industry is going strong. Educated Japanese understand the risks but it is their way of life... Such risks from sodium get downplayed easily I'm not sure that anyone really underst…

Glad to hear she's doing fine for her age. Surely we understand there are statistical variations, and she's on the healthier side luckily. But fried & smoked diets have very strong correlation to cancers in general, and these are validated by studies over last 2 decades. If I remember correctly, after prostrate, stomach cancer is the next common carcinoma in East Asia. (I could be a bit wrong on relative orders as th…

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.

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

#104

Post by durpkingOP » Tue, Apr 19, 2022, 6:49 PM UTC

It's more impressive that they can eat miso soup with chop sticks, in their example.

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

#105

Post by samoppy » Tue, Apr 19, 2022, 6:55 PM UTC

srvmshr wrote: 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…

No post body was provided.

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

#106

Post by chrischen » Tue, Apr 19, 2022, 6:55 PM UTC

Where do these daily sodium recommendations come from? If Japanese people on average are eating two times the recommended daily amount and are not seeing adverse effects then is the recommendation more of you don’t need to eat so much sodium?

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

#107

Post by savanaly » Tue, Apr 19, 2022, 6:56 PM UTC

Johnny555 wrote: post #103

srvmshr wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad to hear she's doing fine for her age. Surely we understand there are statistical variations, and she's on the healthier side luckily. But fried & smoked diets have very strong correlation to cancers in general, and these are validated by studies over last 2 decades. If I remember correctly, after prostrate, stomach cancer is the next common carcinoma in East Asia. (I could be a bit wrong on relative orders as th…

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.

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

#108

Post by chrischen » Tue, Apr 19, 2022, 6:58 PM UTC

durpkingOP wrote: post #104

It's more impressive that they can eat miso soup with chop sticks, in their example.

This is the way in Japan. They drink the soup using the bowl and chopstick to pick up the parts. No spoons.

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

#109

Post by mehrzad » Tue, Apr 19, 2022, 6:58 PM UTC

chrischen wrote: post #106

Where do these daily sodium recommendations come from? If Japanese people on average are eating two times the recommended daily amount and are not seeing adverse effects then is the recommendation more of you don’t need to eat so much sodium?

Japan has high stomach cancer rates and sodium is implicated https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1860129/

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

#110

Post by Johnny555 » Tue, Apr 19, 2022, 7:02 PM UTC

savanaly wrote: post #107

Johnny555 wrote: post #103

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.

No, winning the lottery is the definition of luck, the lotteries spend a lot of money making sure that's true. There's nothing a person could do (besides play more) that increases their chance of winning.

But I believe that long-lived people are more than just "lucky", there's some physiological difference (possibly coupled with environmental differences) that makes the difference between people that eat similar diets and have much different levels of health/longevity.