Boosting Flavor, Elevating Nutrition

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals that call for zero hunger and good health and well-being are important for building a healthy future, and food scientists can play an important role in reaching those goals. By working to develop foods that improve nutrition while enhancing flavor, food scientists can make it easier for consumers to eat balanced, tasty meals and live healthier lives.

“Enhancing flavors has a huge effect on the nutritional content of food,” says Aaron Andrews, associate corporate chef at Ajinomoto Health & Nutrition, North America. “By enhancing the right flavors, we can help our food industry partners address their largest nutritional challenges while maintaining the appeal of their products.”

Top Dietary Challenges

Today, nine of 10 Americans consume too much sodium, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The American Heart Association reports that the average American adult consumes two to three times the daily recommended amount of sugar. With the prominence of packaged food in the American diet, food manufacturers and their food scientists can lead the way to broad dietary pattern shifts by strategically developing new products to be healthier and redeveloping legacy products for improved nutrition, such as reduced salt or sugar levels.

Solutions That Don't Compromise on Taste

Ingredients that enhance taste can serve as a tool to help lower the salt, fat, and/or sugar content in foods, as well as make nutritious foods more flavorful and desirable to consumers’ changing preferences. Some of the most impactful solutions for improving flavor rely on the concepts of umami and kokumi.

Umami translates from Japanese to “essence of deliciousness” and provides a savory flavor or meatiness to foods. In 1908, Kikunae Ikeda discovered that the amino acid glutamate is responsible for the umami taste, a discovery that led to the founding of the Ajinomoto Group. Glutamate is one of the most prevalent amino acids in nature and is inherently present in foods like tomatoes, mushrooms, and Parmesan cheese. Ajinomoto was founded on Ikeda’s discovery, commercializing the world’s first umami seasoning, monosodium glutamate (MSG).

Despite being historically maligned, MSG’s perception is changing, particularly among younger generations. And as the purest form of umami, MSG can provide savory taste while helping to reduce sodium by up to 30%, Andrews says. Research shows that using glutamates like MSG as a partial replacement for salt in certain savory food categories could reduce sodium intake by up to 8% in the U.S. population (Wallace et al. 2019).

“When we take salt out of a recipe, umami allows us to put the flavor back in,” Andrews says. “And unlike other taste receptors, we have umami receptors all over our tongues. So when we add umami, we introduce intense, rich flavors that go across your entire palate.”

Ajinomoto continues to pioneer the science of great taste, driving understanding of a concept that has recently gained more interest, kokumi. On their own, kokumi compounds are tasteless and odorless, yet they complement umami by adding complexity to existing flavors in food. Ajinomoto first discovered this concept in the 1980s through a compound in garlic. Researchers continue to discover receptors and compounds to harness this sensation for better tasting food. Kokumi translates from Japanese to “rich taste” and refers to the richness, body, and complexity we see in complex flavor profiles similar to an aged cheese or wine.

“Kokumi is not a taste in itself; it amplifies other tastes,” Andrews says. “It increases richness, creaminess, and mouthfeel. It helps round out the flavors in a dish.”

Andrews adds that by leveraging the flavor-building qualities of umami and kokumi, food formulators can create more customized solutions by reducing some ingredients based on the functionality they serve in a specific dish. The result is rich, delicious foods that don’t taste like anything is missing. For example, utilizing kokumi, it is possible to reduce cheese and salt in a sauce without perception of cheesiness or saltiness changing.

Umami and Kokumi in Action

There are endless opportunities to experiment with umami and kokumi to improve the nutritional profile of various dishes by reducing sodium, sugar, and fat without sacrificing taste. Ingredients that deliver umami and kokumi can amplify flavor notes such as garlic, herbs, and cheese, allowing for less of these ingredients in a savory formulation for enhanced flavor or cost savings. They can heighten the savory flavor profile of vegetable dishes to make them more desirable. They can also balance flavors and improve mouthfeel in lower-fat foods. For example, Andrews and his team successfully used kokumi in peanut paste to enhance fat perception, resulting in “the same mouthfeel as peanut butter, without as much oil,” he says.

Studies prove MSG’s success in sodium reduction. In a 2020 study, participants aged 18 to 62 evaluated three versions of four different dishes: roasted vegetables, a quinoa bowl, a savory yogurt dip, and cauliflower fried rice with pork. One version of each was a standard recipe with typical salt content, another was a significantly reduced-salt version of the recipe, and the third was the same reduced-salt recipe plus added MSG. The reduced-salt recipes with added MSG were liked as much or better than the standard recipes, which suggested that MSG can be effectively used to reduce sodium without compromising on taste. The reduced-salt recipes were frequently described as “bland” and the standard recipes were described as “salty,” while the MSG recipes were described as “delicious,” “flavorful,” “balanced,” and “savory.”

Any developer aiming for sodium reduction knows that sometimes the process can be a bit more complicated than just lowering salt, especially when salt plays a functional role besides taste in a finished product. Currently, Andrews is working on sodium reduction in baked products. “Bread is one of the biggest sources of sodium in the United States,” he says. “We’ve been able to use MSG to remove 30% of the sodium in bread, and with umami, the flavor remains while pulling out all that salt. We’re working constantly to create custom solutions for these types of complex problems.”

Ajinomoto’s solutions seek to close the gap between industry and consumer demand to address both taste and nutrition. For example, Ajinomoto’s Savorboost line of yeasts and yeast extracts includes products that can deliver both umami and kokumi in applications like snack seasonings, plant-based proteins, seafood, dairy and cheese sauces and dips, savory dips and sauces, and more.

“Sometimes companies come to us because of our expertise in amino acids,” Andrews says. “We can use that expertise to tailor specific solutions for various challenges.”

Ultimately, Andrews views this developing area of science as one that advances food nutrition in an effort to contribute to a healthier world. “People tend to avoid healthier foods because of preconceived ideas that those foods don’t taste as good, but that’s a misconception,” he says. “We want to get people items that are incredibly flavorful but are also nutritious. We offer solutions to deliver on nutrition without sacrificing flavor.”ft