Preserving good taste whilst adding in-demand nutrients

By RAM CHAUDHARI, Ph.D., FACN, CNS OVER the last decade, consumer demand for healthier products emerged as one of the key drivers of the food industry. In the wake of the introduction of thousands of products over the years, however, there have also been many failures and it became clear that when it comes to product success in the mainstream, taste rules. This is true for consumers at nearly every age, around the world. Low-calorie foods, fortified and functional foods, reduced fat or reduced sugar foods all have considerable taste, texture and stability challenges that affect the overall consumer taste experience. This poses many challenges for food formulation worldwide. Not only must manufacturers attend to geo-cultural sensory preferences, but the integration of functional ingredients itself creates consumer acceptance issues by virtue of the nutrients' individual and interactive flavour notes.
A primary solution to optimising taste in healthful foods and functional beverage applications is selection of the appropriate ingredients that can modify or minimise unpleasant taste attributes that often occur when formulating these products. The functional ingredient taste challenge Historically, manufacturers started differentiating healthier products with the addition of one or two ingredients that allowed them to promote a simple consumer message such as "now with added vitamin C." They worked with ingredients that could be relatively easily incorporated in their product line and shied from working with ingredients that offered benefit but were difficult to process or were known for bad taste and aroma. PUFAs and choline are prime examples of "problem ingredients" that offer nutrient value but whose smell and taste are undesirable to many consumers. Some vitamins, such as B1 can impart a bitter taste and sulphurous egg aroma, whilst minerals such as zinc, copper and iron can present a lingering metallic taste. Within the past few years, though, consumer interest in promoting health has forced manufacturers to revisit challenging ingredients and figure out how to make them work. Moreover, consumers today are not simply looking for one or two added beneficial ingredients, they are looking for more complex products that are formulated to deliver a health benefit to their demographic (gender, age) or to address specific health conditions (immunity, bone, cardiovascular, and gut health). This means not just overcoming the challenges of single ingredients, but overcoming the issues of combining and processing multiple ingredients. And it means finding creative ways to make the functional ingredients work in the type of products consumers are demanding, pushing nutrient integration into some environments that are not an easy fit. When working with multiple functional ingredients, the core challenge facing product developers is the complexity of the food matrix. A food product is comprised of many different ingredients that together form a complete, uniformly balanced physical and chemical nutritional system. Many of these ingredients are multifunctional, so removing or adding new functional food ingredients may disrupt the total balance of the product. Adding in-demand nutrients together, may affect taste, appearance, texture or all three of these important parameters that together constitute perceived product quality. In turn, stability of the final product would be adversely affected with unacceptable taste. Undesirable interactions between the various components of complex foods and beverages increase the risk of quality-deterioration in a product. Of particular concern is moisture transfer between components with different water activity. Other interactions that can affect the sensory quality of a product include the migration of fats, oxygen and other flavouring substances, plus, the miJordan Shoes