I’m not saying that older Millennials and younger Gen X folks have an obsession with clear products, but I am saying that we snatched up clear pagers, clear Nintendos, clear iMacs, and even clear Pepsi before all of that went the way of the dodo.

So maybe it’s not all that surprising to hear that scientists, who are probably our ages (or okay fine, younger) have decided that clear mice are the wave of the future as far as scientific research.

The secret to being able to see an animal’s inner workings with just your own two eyes?

Doritos dust.

Specifically, the yellow food dye that’s found in Doritos and other foods – tartrazine, or yellow no. 5, mixed with water.

Adam Wax of the National Science Foundation saw the results with his own eyes.

“You could see through the mouse. I’ve been working in optics for 30 years, and I thought that result was jaw-dropping.

The method is topical and non-invasive, which could be extremely appealing to people in not only research but in medicine overall.

The authors, like Gusong Hong, believe the tactic could be useful to see tumors, to find veins, and even to help with cosmetic procedures like tattoo removal.

Our cells normally refract light, causing it to bend instead of reflecting straight back. The higher the refractive index, the more it bends.

Different kinds of cells have different indexes, and for the most part, means the organs and tissues they make up are appear opaque.

But when tartrazine dye is applied to the cells, it increases the amount of light they absorb, meaning there’s less light to scatter.

“When a material absorbs a lot of light at one color, it will bend light more at other colors. When tartrazine is dissolved in water, it makes water bend light more like fats do. As water, fat, and other cells start to bend light at the same index, you have a transparent image.”

The researchers tested their theory by soaking a raw chicken breast in the dye mixed with water, and it worked like a charm.

Then, as we know, it worked on mice, too.

The effect washes off with the dye, and it’s only as toxic as food dye is allowed to be in the United States.

Which, that’s a topic of conversation for another day.

So far, the transparency only goes about three millimeters deep, but they plan to try to push the results deeper.

“The final goal is to use on a human, and so far, we are limited. The biggest breakthrough I see here is it could be finally accessible to humans.”

We might be getting back to our 90s routes sooner rather than later.

And this time, we’ll be able to see through our own skin and not just a cool computer.

If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read a story that reveals Earth’s priciest precious metal isn’t gold or platinum and costs over $10,000 an ounce!