digestion

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French scientists have created the first-ever mechanical mouth that mimics the first steps of digestion, chewing up an apple to create the same mushy pulp a human mouth would. While some artificial mouths already exist—to test soft foods or sets of teeth, for example—this invention is the first to actually recreate what happens when we eat solid food. New Scientist suggests this could be a first step towards “a robotic taste-tester designed to improve food quality and our understanding of flavour.”