Coming soon: A triple flavoured stick of chewing gum!

A team at the Institute of Food Research, led by food scientist Dave Hart, believes that recent advances in nanotechnology, which deals with structures just millionths of a millimetre in size, could capture and release flavours in a precisely controlled way.

The scientists are experimenting with creating different flavour layers, based on a 17th Century "preserve".

The flavours are separated with a tasteless gelatine that stops them from overlapping, with a final dessert taste at the centre, encapsulated in a high-tech gel called Gellan, the 'Daily Mail' reported.

In Roald Dahl's book 'Charlie And The Chocolate Factory', Willy Wonka proudly displays a stick of Three-Course Dinner Chewing Gum, which he claims can reproduce the flavours of every individual course of a full meal.

The gum is able to convey the flavours of "tomato soup, roast beef and baked potato, and blueberry pie and ice cream", he claims.

Hart says" "Wonka's fantasy concoction has been nothing but a dream for millions of kids across the world. But science and technology is changing the future of food, and these nanoparticles may hold the answer to creating a three course gourmet gum."

He said that scientists at Harvard University have been working on nanostructures called colloidosomes, which can be used to capture ingredients. Their findings could be a step towards developing this gum.

He said: "Tiny nanostructures within the gum would contain each of the different flavours. These would be broken up and released upon contact with saliva or after a certain amount of chewing.

"The tomato soup capsule would break on contact with saliva, followed by roast beef and blueberry pie in stronger structures -- providing a sequential taste explosion as you chew harder."

The gum would only work as a sweet, however, and would not reproduce the feeling of being full nor would it provide any vital nutrients.