Inside a small room in Meiji University in Tokyo, a middle-aged man with furrowed brows warily places a spoonful of soup in his mouth. His eyes widen as he swallows. “It certainly feels stronger,” he exclaims in a video for a local news network. His first spoonful had tasted bland, thanks to the low-sodium recipe. The difference was due to a button on the spoon’s handle, which, when powered on, leverages a weak electric current via electrodes embedded in the tip of the spoon to simulate the sodium ion channels on his tongue’s taste receptors. The result: a 50% hike in saltiness. The smart spoon is set to be commercially released in Japan at the end of 2023 by Kirin Holdings, an international beverage and pharma company, and Japan’s second-largest brewery.

Scientists have been working on taste-simulation technologies for years and have artificially generated “virtual” minty, sweet, sour, salty, and bitter flavors, as well as chewy and crunchy textures, via electrode-embedded gadgets and electrical muscle stimulation jaw patches. The difference is that this is the first time a major company has taken virtual-taste tools outside the lab. Potential applications for this tech include therapeutics, gastronomy, and of course, the metaverse.

“We will be able to taste . . . and dine together in the metaverse space,” says Homei Miyashita, the developer of the electric salt spoon and a professor of advanced mathematical sciences at Meiji University. “This is taste AR. . . . It’s an extension and augmentation of the saltiness we perceive from salt in the real world.”

Although the metaverse has yet to see widespread adoption, despite billions of investment dollars, virtual tastings could one day make places like Gordon Ramsay’s metaverse restaurant, Wendy’s Wendyverse, or the Miller Lite Meta Lite bar a lot more interesting. While vision, sound, touch, and smell have been integrated (or are getting there), virtual taste has been the lone holdout.

It’s complicated to replicate taste. When food enters the mouth, it sets off “a chemical reaction that sends signals to the brain for how to interpret those findings,” says Eleanore Eckstrom, an R&D director at Nature’s Fynd, a microbe-based-protein startup. And that just covers the five basic tastes—flavor is perceived via an amalgamation of odor, taste, and tactile nerve sensations. “Simulat[ing] taste would be a critical element for making a virtual space more realistic,” she says.

This conundrum has formed the basis of Miyashita’s work, and he’s spent the last decade designing virtual-taste simulators. His innovations include the Norimaki Synthesizer, a popsicle-size device that combines electrolyte gel nodules with an electric current to simulate the five tastes; and a lickable television screen, where a thin film is coated by flavor canisters to add lickable elements to images.

In 2019, Miyashita teamed up with Kirin Holdings to develop a tool that increased satisfaction with low-sodium diets. Japan consumes around double the WHO’s recommended salt intake, which places the population at high-risk for strokes and hypertension.

It was challenging to design an electrified utensil that was comfortable enough for daily use, says Ai Sato, a manager at Kirin Holdings. The process continually evolved, she explained (in one early test, 20% of users described the electric current as “unbearable”). They tried electrified chopsticks, but people didn’t like strapping a battery to their wrists, so they settled on an electrified spoon and bowl with snap-on batteries. “We quantitatively demonstrate[d] the effect of salty taste enhancement with low-sodium foods for people who actually follow a low-sodium diet,” says Sato.

Pricing hasn’t been announced, but Nimesha Ranasinghe, assistant professor at the University of Maine and a cofounder of FlaVR Labs, an innovator in virtual-taste research through electrical and thermal technology, estimates that it might fall at around $100. Ranasinghe is well-positioned to know, as he’s working on a similar device: the Salty Spoon, partly funded by an NSF grant.

“There are minor differences in our approaches,” says Ranasinghe. “The basic concept is that we send some electrons through the taste buds [and] change the frequency and the magnitude of the current to achieve different taste sensations and intensity levels.” Salt is easier to electrically simulate than sweet, which is produced by rapidly heating or cooling the tongue (thermal simulation) and only works on a subset of people.

It’s going to be a while before the Salty Spoon hits U.S. stores, as Ranasinghe is focused on understanding the long-term consequences of taste simulators on the body. “What kind of hormones are we releasing [with virtual salt] compared to actual salt?” he asks. “If we simulate the sweet sensation, are our bodies still going to release insulin?”

“Even if the tech isn’t perfect, it could be life-changing for those who may have lost their sense of taste from COVID,” says Eckstrom, “or have a reduced ability to taste.”

Once perfected, virtual-taste tech and virtual reality would make a perfect pairing, said Ranasinghe. Right now, he’s in preclinical trials with nursing homes, he says, where many people struggle to eat the bland low-sodium food they’re prescribed. Then there’s the psychological impact of virtual flavors—could they curb binge eating, for example, as a sort of digital Ozempic?

Ranasinghe is also excited about connecting real-life drinking culture to virtual reality, and has already demonstrated this with a connected cup, aka The Vocktail (virtual cocktail), equipped with color-changing LEDs, electrodes, and an odor tube, to change the flavor and sweetness of the drink.

Still, it could take time before the technology can truly replicate the complex taste of a microbrew or a burger. “It takes hundreds of revisions to create artificial flavors like watermelon that taste real,” says Mandy Naglich, author of How to Taste: A Guide to Discovering Flavor and Savoring Life, “. . . and that’s using real ingredients not electric pulses.” She’s skeptical that true-to-life VR tastings can be achieved—at least anytime soon. “It will be years before virtual-taste experiences come anywhere close to the real thing,” says Naglich.