A Japanese professor, with the help of his students, has developed a technique for tasting foods displayed on a screen. A confusing invention that’s not really covid friendly.

Even without the Covid-19 pandemic, wouldn’t this Japanese invention be the worst in terms of technological progress? A Japanese professor has developed a prototype of a television screen that can be licked. It imitates the flavors of foods displayed on the screen.

If we get the principle right, a device called Taste The TV (TTTV) uses 10 flavor cartridges that evaporate together to create a taste for a specific food. The flavor sample is then slipped onto a plastic film placed on the screen and the viewer just has to slide his tongue there.

“The goal is to allow people to experience something like eating in a restaurant halfway around the world, even while staying at home.”Homi Miyashita explained. But don’t expect to be able to taste and discover variations in the flavor of desserts served by your favorite Top Chef nominees. Tastes, unless there is a technological breakthrough that escapes us, are uniform.

Miyashita, the Japanese engineer responsible for the project, also worked with a team of about 30 students on a variety of other flavor-related devices, including a fork that makes foods taste richer. TTTV could one day come in handy for remote cooking classes, but its main use is likely to be entertainment. We imagine for example a game that allows you to taste a flavor on the screen and guess its origin.

It will cost about 775 euros to manufacture the device.