A scientist in England is on the brink of creating a Willy Wonka-style chewing gum that tastes like a three-course dinner. Yes, he's talking about the three-course meal gum made famous by spoilt brat Violet Beauregarde in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Food scientist Dave Hart says nanotechnology makes the dream an entirely possible reality, without the unfortunate side effect of blowing up like an enormous blueberry.
He has already developed a boiled lolly that changes flavours using different layers, and scientists at Harvard University in the US had developed nanostructures called colloidosomes which could capture ingredients. Colloidosomes were originally developed in order to deliver drugs to specific parts of the digestive system, but Prof Hart said there was no reason why they couldn't be used to create Willy Wonka's three-course gum.
The nanostructures - less than a few millionths of millimetre in size will be in form capsules around the specific ingredients to stop them mixing with each other. Researchers have developed a technology that allows different flavours to be captured inside microscopic capsules, which can be designed to release the flavours at different times.” A Wonka-like variety could work something like this: “Some of the capsules could be filled with flavouring for tomato soup that would break open on contact with saliva, while tougher capsules would contain the flavour for roast beef that would break open as the gum is chewed. A final flavour for blueberry pie could be packaged in capsules that require vigorous chewing to burst.”
As long as the final course doesn’t turn us into giant blueberries in need of juicing, we’re all for it.
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