Flavor enhancers

Flavor enhancers are chemical compounds or materials that are used in very minute quantities to intensify or enhance the favor that is already present in the food.

Monosodium glutamate is one of the best known and most widely used flavor enhancers. It is highly used food additive all over the world. Other less prominent flavor enhancers, which are similar to MSG, include tricholoric acid and ibotenic acid.

They are many theories how the flavor enhancers work.  One theory is that they increase the sensitivity of the taste buds thus increasing flavor.

A second theory suggested that an increase in salivation as a result of the flavor enhancers will increase flavor perception. While a third theory of intensified flavor perception is based on the observation that flavor enhancers produce certain physical sensations in the mouth such as coolness and heat.

Flavor enhancers, very well known in oriental cuisines, have the ability of making more intense basic flavors of meat, meat products, and other foods of animal origin.

Flavor enhancers now intensify desired flavors and mask unwanted ones in beverage, processed fruit and vegetables, and baked goods like bread and cakes.
Flavor enhancers

Flavour of the Future

Flavour of the Future
Multifunctionality with to the single components will simultaneously lead to simplified process technology and cost reduction and is therefore, increasingly called for today.

A lactobacillus culture, which on the one hand imparts a positive mouthfeel effect to a beverage while producing natural stabilizers through its metabolism on the other hand is just as good an example as thickening agents, which simultaneously have positive effects on stabilization.

Cooling agents that simultaneously strengthen the flavour of a product should be also mentioned.

The usage of a verity of different spices can, apart from their flavoring properties at the same time impart additional benefits to the product as far as preservation, color and health are concerned.

Especially for organically oriented consumers such ingredients constitute a valued alternative to chemical preservatives and artificial colors.

The so called intelligent-flavour (flavors being liberated when food is prepared or when it is eaten, depending on different factors such as pH value and temperature) have been gaining increasing importance.

These high-tech intelligent compounds give access to clearly defined product properties. In this context, the potential of a number of diverse ingredient with significant potential as flavor enhancers or masking agents have to be mentioned.

In particular, special minus-diets, e.g. low carbohydrate or low fat diet, change the taste, texture and sensory qualities of a products and therefore require corresponding alterations to endow the products with properties called for by the consumer.

Flavour enhancers are defined as: ‘natural substances which are components of proteins or cells tissue. They have no typical taste or smell, but their presence potentials other flavours present in the food.’ In this field more and more studies are looking at the synergistic abilities of flavour enhancing substance and the possibility of flavour masking.

Bitter blockers and sweetness potential are another field of current importance.

The combination of scientific techniques such as genetic engineering, biotechnology, enzymology, physics and electronics will play an important role in the development of new, innovative flavours.
Flavour of the Future

Flavor enhancers

Flavor enhancers
Flavorings either impart a particular flavor to foods or modify flavors already present. Flavor enhancers intensify flavor already present, especially when desirable flavors are relatively weak.

Monosodium glutamate is one of the beat known and most widely used flavor enhancers. This compound occurs naturally in many foods and in certain seaweed that was used for centuries as a flavor enhancer for soups and other foods. It is only within the last hundred years that the reason for the effectiveness of the seaweed was discovered to be MSG (Monosodium glutamate). The way in which MSG enhances flavor is mot fully understood.

While it is effective at relatively low levels (parts per thousand), there are other compounds called flavor potentiators that also enhance flavors but are extremely powerful, effective in parts per million and even per billion. These compounds have been identified as nucleotides and their effect is attributed to their synergistic properties (properties that intensify the effect of natural flavor components).
Flavor enhancers