Food and Nutrition Biotechnology - UNU-IAS - United Nations ...

5 Modification of food tastes and
healthier food production
20
A breakthrough in the food industry would be to offer
healthier versions of popular foodstuffs without affecting
the taste. If it succeeds to do so, grapefruit juice could be
sweet without added sugar and potato chips flavourful with
half the current content of salt. This kind of research could
have applications in medicine manufacture. In April 2003,
Linguagen Corp., a biotechnology company in Cranbury,
New Jersey, conducting taste research, was granted a patent
for the first molecule that will block bitter tastes in food,
beverages and pharmaceuticals. The compound, adenosine
5’-monophosphate or AMP, occurs naturally (in human
breast milk, among other sources) and, when added to
certain foodstuffs, including coffee and canned or bottled
citrus juice, the company states, it blocks some of the acidic
tastes from being felt by the tongue (Day, 2003).
The finding of a bitter suppressor attracts all food
companies, e.g. Coca-Cola Co., Kraft Foods and Solae, a
soya-foods firm owned by E.I. Dupont de Nemours and Co.,
Inc., and Bunge have each expressed interest in flavour and
taste biotechnology. Kraft Foods and Solae are Linguagen
clients while Coca-Cola Co. has signed a research deal with
Senomyx, another biotechnology company (Day, 2003).
Some research has focused on finding compounds that
would trick the receptors on the tongue by accentuating
or blocking certain elements in the food, allowing people
to taste a cup of coffee without adding cream or sugar,
or the sensation of full fat in low-fat products. Processed
foods such as canned soups, sauces and snacks like potato
chips contain high amounts of salt to mask the bitter tastes
that result from the very hot cooking process. Soft drinks
are sweetened to tone down the bitter taste of caffeine.
Food and beverage companies are, on the other hand, very
concerned, as a group, about health and nutrition because
of all the reports on epidemic obesity, epidemic diabetes,
cardio-vascular diseases and hypertension. Hence the
search for compounds that keep food tasty, minus salt,
sugar and fat (Day, 2003).
So far scientists at Linguagen Corp. have discovered about
20 compounds that blocked bitter tastes and have been
granted patents to use four of the compounds as bitter
blockers. Because humans have more than 30 separate
bitter taste receptors, finding a universal bitter blocker is
nearly impossible. Linguagen Corp. is also trying to discover
and market a natural sweetener to replace artificial ones
like aspartame or saccharine, which often leave a bitter
after-taste. The company planned to license bitter blockers
to food, beverage and medicine manufacturers in the USA
by early 2004 (Day, 2003).
Senomyx, based in La Jolla, California, is also developing
bitter blockers, as well as molecules that block unpleasant
smells and others that increase the salty taste in low
sodium snacks while decreasing the product salt content.
The research was in the early stages by mid-2003. The
Coca-Cola Co. – the world’s first-biggest soft-drink company,
commercializing 400 beverage brands in 200 countries,
with an annual turnover of $21.044 billion and a net profit
of $4.347 billion in 2003 – is one of the company’s clients.
PepsiCo, Inc., is also interested in taste biotechnology and in
anything that can impact food or beverages on a large scale.
Since AMP is not bioengineered and regarded as safe,
it will be accepted by people and not shunned by
consumers like previous additives which were supposed
to revolutionize low-fat foodstuffs but later performed
far below expectations. Much of current taste research
is the result of radical rethinking of the mechanisms of
perception of tastes by humans that has taken place since
1993. Researchers have shown that the human brain had
the ability to recognize a variety of flavours including bitter,
sour, savory and sweet all over the tongue rather than in
specific areas of the tongue, as it was thought before. The
tongue papillae contain the taste buds; when food mixes
with saliva, molecules dissolve on the papillae and, through
the taste buds, send a signal to the brain, which interprets
the flavour of what is being eaten. When a bitter blocker
hits the tongue, it prevents the bitter taste receptors from
being activated. The brain is thus unable to recognize the
bitter flavour, while the latter is still embedded in the food
or beverage (Day, 2003).