This Fork Can Make Your Vegetables Taste Like Bacon

Aromafork by Molecule-R

People have been trying for years to come up with new recipes to make unpopular foods taste good, with varying success and lots of added cheese. With MOLECULE-R’s new Aromafork, however, it’s no longer a case of what you see is what you get — now, what you smell is what you get.

The Aromafork works by essentially fooling the taste buds with scent. One drop of a concentrated liquid aroma is dripped onto a special diffusing paper on the handle of the fork; as a person inhales while biting into whatever food they’re eating, they taste what they fork tells them to taste. According to the Huffington Post, the nose can distinguish “trillions” of scents, making it better at distinguishing taste than our tongues are.

As many people say, we taste with our noses; since the nose is so powerful, the Aromafork’s concentrated odors basically overpower the taste buds, creating strange contradictions like vegetables that taste like bacon or chocolate mousse that tastes like wasabi.

Jonathan Coutu, president of MOLECULE-R Flavors, tells the Daily Mail that “the initial idea was to reinvent the traditional fork into an improved utensil that would trick people’s minds by liberating an intense flow of aromas… it’s the perfect educational tool to learn how to better appreciate food.”

Aromafork by Molecule-R

Aromafork by Molecule-R

Available as part of the Aroma R-Evolution kit, which includes four Aromaforks, 50 diffusing papers and 21 different scents, the Aromafork can trick your brain into thinking you’re eating just about anything. The available aromas include coffee, chocolate, basil, mint, wasabi, butter, and peanut — perfect for people with allergies, since, as the Huffington Post notes, the scents don’t include any known allergens. People with peanut allergies will now be able to eat things that taste like peanut butter, and those watching their waistlines will be able to add butter flavor to foods like potatoes or popcorn without adding any calories. Even expensive truffles will now be available for people to taste without actually having to shell out money for truffle butter or truffle oil.

Although the kit was originally created for “education and entertainment,” says the Huffington Post, it may be adapted for diets and weight loss at some point in the future — pretty impressive for an incarnation of the humble fork.