Foods high in sugar are unhealthy, but these additives are too delicious for many of us to give up or reduce in a way. What if we could somehow enjoy their taste without actually eating them? A student team has now designed a spoon with a structure that stimulates taste buds（味蕾）to produce a sense of sweetness without adding calories or chemicals. The project follows previous work involving flavor-enhancing cutlery like chopsticks that increase sweetness with a mild electric current.
The five undergraduate and graduate research students wanted to create a new spoon called Sugarware for people with such disorders as diabetes, with which sugar is largely off their menu.
The new spoon would have several bumps（凸起） on its underside to press against the tongue. The bumps can be covered with a permanent layer of molecules（分子）called ligands. These ligands bond with taste-cell receptor proteins that typically react to sugar molecules or artificial sweeteners. The bond can activate nerve signals, causing the brain to register a sense of sweetness. A diner could thus stimulate sweetness receptors without actual intake of sugar or artificial sweeteners.
This idea is similar to the previous work in that they all use cutlery to enhance taste without a user having to actually consume any sugar. "But the mechanism for stimulating the taste buds is completely different, " Shiyu Xu, one of the student researchers, says, " It uses bumps and taste-bud-stimulating molecules rather than electricity. "
The idea is "very creative, " says Paola Almeida, who is the global director of corporate innovation at candy maker Mars. But the product's commercial success would require a significant behavioral shift among consumers: instead of adding the usual sugar or artificial sweeteners, " now we're saying. 'Use this cutlery. '" Almeida says, "It remains to be seen whether flavor-enhancing cutlery will catch on. "
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