New food culture with digitized taste

A taste sensor, i.e., electronic tongue, is composed of several kinds of lipid/polymer membranes for transforming information of chemical substances producing taste into electric signals, which are input to a computer. The sensor output shows different patterns for chemical substances which have different taste qualities such as saltiness, sourness and bitterness, while it shows similar patterns for chemical substances with similar tastes. The sensor responds to the taste itself, because taste interactions such as the suppression effect, which appears between sweet and bitter substances, can be reproduced as well. Suppression of the bitterness of quinine and a drug substance by sucrose or bitter-masking chemicals can be quantified. Amino acids and peptides are classified into several groups according to their own tastes based on sensor outputs. The taste of foodstuffs such as beer, coffee, mineral water, milk, soup, sake and rice can be discussed quantitatively using the taste sensor, which provides the objective, digitized scale for the human sensory expression. Desired taste can be reproduced anywhere and anytime. The taste sensor can create a new food culture all over the world.