HEALTH & WELLNESS

"Health & Wellness" is the most popular motto of today all around the world. Consumers' diets vary and eating habits change as they become more conscious about their health and wellbeing. Consumers with a holistic approach prefer products which they believe to be more healthy. However the most important parameter in their decision making process remains the taste. Research and development activities are conducted to redesign products, improve and diversify ingredients in order to reduce the products' fat, salt and sugar content without compromising on taste. Aromsa provides solutions developed by experienced flavour experts using state of the art technologies to achieve a balanced flavour profile in products with reduced fat, salt and sugar content.

Fat Reduction

Fat, which provides visual characteristics such as gloss and surface integrity, structural properties such as viscosity and hardness, as well as sensory properties such as mouthfeel and texture, does also have very important nutritional functions in addition to its physical and chemical properties.

There are two main approaches to reduce the fat content of food products. The first one is to use of ingredients which are made by esterification of fatty acids which have similar physical properties as fat with carbohydrates, glycosides or polyols. The second one is to use proteins, carbohydrates, hydrocolloids or combination of these ingredients to replace the physical as well as the sensory properties of fat. The challenge of both processes is that the interaction between these ingredients and volatile ingredients of flavours will have an impact on the efficiency and the release of the flavours. We offer a wide range of especially designed flavours and provide our support for recipe development in order to achieve optimum ingredient configurations. Furthermore we do have solutions such as mouth watering flavours which can correct the problems in a product's texture and flavor performance caused by the reduction of fat.

Salt Reduction

Salt is a very important ingredient that is widely used in food industry. What makes it so important? Salt is composed of sodium and chlorine. As a result of these elements, salt has many critical functions including ensuring longer shelf lives, controlling microbiological properties and contributing to taste. Salt is used mainly to give saltines but at the same time to improve the perception of taste, make it more intense and longer lasting, to boost the flavour perception and even to preserve the food. Therefore reducing the salt content by keeping the same functionality is not an easy task.

Reducing salt content in food can be achieved with different methods such as using potassium chloride or mineral salts. Unfortunately, the use of such minerals might cause unpleasant notes in a product and does have a strong impact on the taste profile since they do suppress many flavours. Therefore a lot of previous research done focused on rebalancing the flavour profile and /or the masking of unpleasant flavours which occur when these kinds of ingredients are used.

Some recent studies have focused on identification of molecules that enhance saltiness and the efficient use of these molecules in addition to amino acid combinations.

As Aromsa we provide various unique and efficient solutions which will allow you to reduce the salt content in your products.

Sugar Reduction

Depending on the flavor, many foods and drinks are preferred by consumers because of their sweet taste. Saccarose, glucose, fructose or combination of these are the main sugar source in foods and drinks. On the other hand, these carbohydrates which are easily metabolized, increase blood sugar levels and can cause an increase in fat deposits in the body which can often become the cause of health problems.

Today obesity has become an important health problem even with small children therefore reducing sugar content is a major topic of the food and beverage industries. Low calorie sweeteners and similar ingredients can be used instead of sugar however most of these give an unpleasant flavour or a metallic taste to the product. Furthermore depending on the type of sugar, sugar can enhance the taste of a product and make us feel the taste and flavour more intensely and for a longer time. Similar to salt, sugar also has flavour enhancing capacities.

Besides providing the best solutions to mask unpleasant tastes of low calorie sweeteners, we have also developed sweetening flavours specific to each product category which will support the reduction of sugar by maintaining or even improving the consumer prefered properties of your product. We offer unique solutions with alternative flavours, developed by our flavor and application experts, to support you in developing differentiating products that are in line or even exceed the preferences and expectations of consumers.

Umami

Umami is, besides sweet, sour, salty and bitter, considered as one of the 5 basic tastes. The word umami comes from the Japanese language and actually is build from the characters for delicious and taste.

Especially some products from the Japanese kitchen like e.g. Soysauce and Kombu (Algae variety) do contain high amounts of glutamatic acid and therefore, especially Kombu, has been used in the japanese cuisine since more than one thousand years not only to provide a specific flavor but also to enhance the overall flavor profile of savory food. Mr. Kikunae İkeda, a Japanese scientist, recognized that the taste, provided by this materials, has so far not been scientifically described and was quite different to the known tastes of salty, sweet, bitter and sour. He continued his investigation to learn more about the taste characteristics of various salts of the glutamic acid and found out that amongst this salts, the sodium salt of glutamic acid was the best soluble and potent one.

Aromsa has been working very actively on replacing MSG in food products to satisfy the needs of concerned consumers without having a negative impact on the overal flavor profile of the food product. Just like replacing other taste materials (sugar, salt, bitter, acidity) in food products, this replacement requires a hollisitc view on the product and its production process.

Masking Agent

Buying and consumption decisions of food and beverage products are more and more based on the personalized needs of consumers. Therefore, the market for such kind of products is steadly growing. Unfortunately, some of the ingredients which are added to meet this requirements of the consumers do not only deliver a functionality, but at the same time might deliver an unpleasant flavor profile or even influence the mouthfeel and texture of products.

Masking can be described as the enhancement of drivers of liking for consumers by surpressing the negative sensorial properties of certain materials added to enrich the food and/or beverage product.

Unfortunately, since there are a lot of factors influencing the sensorial performance of a product, there is very seldom a universal way of masking unwanted notes or effects in a product. Very often masking will require a review of all ingredients used, as well as a review of the production methodology to come up with a consumer preferred product solution. Depending on the product and the ingredients, this does not only require an indepth expertise regarding the ingredients including the flavor but also regarding of all directly or indirectly influencing factors. Also, the right choice of an efficient delivery system (e.g. release will happen only after passing the oral cavity) will be essential for the success of the masking.

As Aromsa, we do have dedicated application experts and flavorists who do have the required expertise about every criteria which will be relevant to ensure the sensorial superiority of your products.