Meta Cookie to the World: "I Will Metamorphose Into Another Flavored Cookie!"

Move over, royal wedding goers -- the Japanese have topped you on the stylish head gear. Theirs can help us diet!

Japanese researchers are now using augmented reality technology to mimic the taste of a cookie. Here's what happens. You take a plain, tasteless cookie and brand it with an L-shaped marker that can be tracked by a computer.

You put on the Meta Cookie contraption, which includes a virtual-reality headset. Even though you are holding your plain cookie, the image of a different cookie, the desired cookie, is replicated through the headset. Then, scents of that cookie are released through tubes aimed at your nose. (I'm not kidding -- have you watched the video?)

Because your actual branded cookie is being tracked, as you get it closer to your mouth, the system can intensify the sensory input.

As the video demonstrates, the Meta Cookie tricks your brain into thinking that a flavorless sugar cookie is actually a different flavor cookie -- chocolate, almond, tea, strawberry, orange, maple, lemon, or cheese. (Yes, cheese.)

Whaddaya think? Is this gadget market-ready? While you ponder, pass me some of those cheese cookies, will ya?
 

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