Thirsty? ‘The Right Cup’ Turns Water Into Your Favorite Drink Using Scent – Not Sugar

Doctors recommend drinking at least eight cups of water a day. But let’s be honest: Plain water is not the tastiest drink available. Most people prefer soda and fruity drinks, but most contain an unhealthy amount of sugar, which if drunk daily, increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease, obesity and other chronic conditions.

A staggering 35 percent of adult Americans are obese, according to the US Centers for Disease Control; moreover, the American Diabetes Association estimates that 30 million children and adults in the US have diabetes, which is one of the leading causes of death in the US. Cutting down on sugar consumption has become a public health necessity and yet soft drinks are still readily available – and they’re typically loaded with sugar.

But now, Israeli entrepreneur Isaac Lavy has invented a unique cup that eliminates sugar from our beverages – without compromising the flavor. Through an ingenious mechanism, the Right Cup, which looks just like any other plastic cup, will trick your brain into thinking you are drinking fruit-flavored soda when, in fact, all you are drinking is 100 percent pure water.

The Right Cup. Courtesy

Lavy was diagnosed with diabetes when he was 30 years old: “My doctors told me to drink only water, but I hated the taste.”

The mechanism of the Right Cup seems pretty simple: The same FDA-approved substances that make our sweet drinks delicious are positioned inside the cup itself – not in the drink. When sipping water out of the Right Cup, the nose will transmit to the brain the same signal that the tongue would send if it tasted something sweet. The basic idea is that the sense of smell is responsible for 80 percent of our taste experience, which explains why when we have a cold we can hardly taste any flavor.

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It almost sounds too good to be true. Could the human brain be tricked so easily? The founders claim it really works: After five years of research and development, the company tested the prototype and also recorded some of the reactions on a video; people seem to struggle to believe that all they are drinking is pure water.

In November 2015, at the conclusion of the testing phase, the founders launched a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo that has been incredibly successful. Aiming to raise $50,000, this miraculous cup more than tripled its inventor’s original goal, raising $163,000 in three weeks.

The Right Cup. Courtesy

The company plans to start production in February 2016 and to ship the cup in April 2016; the price for a package of four cups is currently $78. The cup will be available in four different flavors: Apple, lemon-lime, orange and berries.

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Encouraged by the outstanding results of the Indiegogo campaign, the company is now aiming to raise additional funds in order to begin research necessary to reproduce the Cola flavor, one of the most popular in sweet beverages.