Electric spoon that makes food taste saltier is now available to purchase in Japan
Sticking to a healthy diet can be really challenging - so being able to potentially fool your taste buds could be a really interesting way to help you stay with it.
After all, part of why unhealthy food is so moreish is that it's often laden down with salt, which us humans just love to eat.
Now, though, researchers in Japan might have come up with a genius way around this problem, by producing a battery-powered spoon that can trick your tastebuds into thinking food is saltier than it actually is.
After all, since higher sodium intake has been repeatedly linked with increased risk of high blood pressure, strokes and other conditions, anything that cuts down salt intake can only be a good thing.
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The Electric Salt Spoon is made of plastic and metal, and works by passing a very weak electrical current down through the tip of the device. This apparently concentrates sodium ion molecules on the tongue, making you taste more of the salt that's already in the food.
This can apparently make the salt in your food taste 1.5 times as noticeable, which in turn means that you can use less to get the same taste benefits, in theory at least.
There are also four levels of intensity that you can choose from on the Electric Salt Spoon, so people are able to find a setting that works best for them.
Interestingly, the spoon is being sold by beermaker Kirin, which is branching out from its brewing roots to offer more health-conscious gadgets and products.
The spoon weighs 60g and is priced at 19,800 yen (£99) - although there are only going to be 200 units to buy at first, making this initial run something of a limited edition.
That's probably sensible, though, since it's such a new product that predicting how much demand there will be for it isn't easy.
It's particularly relevant that the spoon is being sold in Japan, too, since the country's population has a particularly high salt intake, averaging at around double the World Health Organisation's recommended daily levels on average.
Kirin researcher Ai Sato said: "Japan has a food culture that tends to favour salty flavours. Japanese people as a whole need to reduce the amount of salt intake but it can be difficult to move away from what we're used to eating. That's what led us to develop this electric spoon."
The spoon was co-developed with Meiji University professor Homei Miyashita, who had previously published research showing similar results with electric chopsticks, so it's the result of plenty of years of research in Japan.