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There was a booth at CES Unveiled, the first big annual event at the Consumer Electronics Expo, that was busy all night. And rightly so. The booth had easily one of, if not, the weirdest products him the strangest product you will see this year CES.
This product is Kirin’s Electric Salt Spoon.
What is an electric salt spoon, you ask? Good question! I had no idea myself and neither did all the other people lining up to check out.
The Electric Salt Spoon is a spoon that makes your low sodium food taste more salty without adding extra salt. How? By sending an electric current through the spoon to your tongue.
It seems absurd. So naturally I had to try it.
The taste test of the electric salt spoon
Kirin is a Japanese company that currently sells the electric salt spoon in Japan. Unfortunately, it’s not currently available in the U.S. Fortunately, Kirin brought some for CES attendees to try out.
First, I took some soup that Kirin provided without the spoon. It wasn’t too salty.
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Next, he gave me the Electric Salt Spoon, which is actually made up of two separate pieces. The bowl of the spoon is detachable from the handle. The handle is where the product’s power and menu buttons reside.
Users can choose their level of saltiness from a potential four different modes.
From there, comes the unexpected weird part. You need to hold the handle of the spoon with a fist, as if you are a big child who does not know how to properly hold a spoon. If you don’t hold it properly, the electric salt shaker won’t work. The blue light on the Handle of the Electric Spoon turns white only when you take a sip from the spoon and hold it properly. The light taunted me several times as I tried to put the spoon in my mouth.
That was the biggest drawback of the Electric Salt Spoon. I had more trouble holding a spoon with my fist than I could have imagined. It literally looked like a giant baby, dribbling soup on my chin.
However, does the electric salt shaker work? The soup tasted a little more salty when I correctly used the spoon. But, I asked: Was this just a placebo effect? I just thought the food tasted saltier because the product said it was supposed to?
This is where my inability to hold the spoon with my fist really worked in my favor. As I tried to put the soup in my mouth again, my fingers slipped, disabling the device mid-sip. My taste buds experienced a soup transformation from salty to not so salty in an instant like magic.
Looks like the electric salt shaker works!
Kirin’s mission is certainly a noble one: Get people to eat less salt. We’ll see if I manage to do that. But, mission accomplished to be the weirdest thing Mashable has seen at CES 2025 so far.
