Sakai Kiyota, Okada Masamichi, Yamaguchi Shotaro
Innovation Center, Amano Enzyme Inc., Kakamigahara, Japan.
Front Nutr. 2024 Aug 19;11:1436113. doi: 10.3389/fnut.2024.1436113. eCollection 2024.
One major challenge of reducing salt content in food is the risk of the overall taste becoming bland. Enhancing saltiness is an effective strategy for salt reduction, and the development of salt-reduced foods using these saltiness-enhancing flavorants as food additives is underway. However, an increasing number of consumers demand a reduction in additives in clean-label foods.
Enzyme processing of food is an attractive strategy for developing clean-label foods because enzymes are not considered additives. We aimed to improve the saltiness and umami intensity of vegetable soups by enzyme treatment while meeting clean-label requirements. We first optimized the enzymatic reaction conditions of a protease and glutaminase blend and then investigated the synergistic effects of this enzyme blend on the taste of vegetable soup.
Sensory evaluations indicated that the reaction products (e.g., protein hydrolysates or amino acids) could enhance the umami, kokumi, and saltiness intensity of vegetable soup supplemented with 0.5% NaCl. Notably, the saltiness intensity ratio of the enzyme-treated soup with 0.50, 0.45, and 0.40% NaCl were increased by 1.31-, 1.16-, and 0.99-fold, respectively, when this ratio for the control soup with 0.50% NaCl was set to 1.0. This indicates a 20% salt reduction rate can be achieved by enzyme treatment. Moreover, we found that these enhancements were synergically caused by enzyme-produced glutamic acid and branched-chain amino acids.
Our findings suggest that using enzyme blends of bacterial and fungal proteases and glutaminase is an effective approach to enhancing the saltiness levels of vegetable soups while meeting clean-label requirements.
降低食品中的盐含量面临的一个主要挑战是整体味道变淡的风险。增强咸味是减少盐分的有效策略，目前正在开发使用这些增强咸味的调味剂作为食品添加剂的低盐食品。然而，越来越多的消费者要求减少清洁标签食品中的添加剂。
食品的酶处理是开发清洁标签食品的一种有吸引力的策略，因为酶不被视为添加剂。我们旨在通过酶处理提高蔬菜汤的咸味和鲜味强度，同时满足清洁标签的要求。我们首先优化了蛋白酶和谷氨酰胺酶混合物的酶促反应条件，然后研究了这种酶混合物对蔬菜汤味道的协同作用。
感官评价表明，反应产物（如蛋白质水解物或氨基酸）可以增强添加0.5%氯化钠的蔬菜汤的鲜味、醇厚味和咸味强度。值得注意的是，当将含0.50%氯化钠的对照汤的咸味强度比设为1.0时，含0.50%、0.45%和0.40%氯化钠的酶处理汤的咸味强度比分别提高了1.31倍、1.16倍和0.99倍。这表明通过酶处理可以实现20%的减盐率。此外，我们发现这些增强作用是由酶产生的谷氨酸和支链氨基酸协同引起的。
我们的研究结果表明，使用细菌和真菌蛋白酶与谷氨酰胺酶的混合酶是一种在满足清洁标签要求的同时提高蔬菜汤咸味水平的有效方法。
