Please Pass (On) the Salt
Spending the workday as a food scientist is fun. We get the opportunity to create great tasting food for consumers, but that is not to say that our field does not have its challenges. Many of today’s consumers expect a lot from the food they eat, and it can be a balancing act to meet all wants and desires. At the forefront of these consumer expectations is flavor, but other expectations such as low sodium, all-natural and non-GMO are also part of the everyday life of a food scientist.
While all-natural and non-GMO expectations are relatively recent developments in the food industry, low sodium concerns are well seasoned in our industry. Sodium intake has been on the radar of health professionals, the food industry and consumers for quite some time now, and studies continue to show that most adults in the United States exceed the recommended daily amount of sodium in their daily diets.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported that nine in 10 children in the U.S. eat more sodium than recommended, and about one in six children have raised blood pressure, which is a major risk factor for heart disease and stroke. For these reasons, the food industry is often taking on a balancing act when developing food that not only tastes good but that also contributes less sodium to the consumer’s diet.
Food scientists know that salt is a wonderful ingredient that brings flavor and function to food products. Therefore, challenges often present themselves when they take on the task of developing reduced sodium products. Simply removing some or all of the salt from a product often is not an option if the consumer expects the food to taste and function the same.
Consequently, the food industry needed to come up with solutions that would allow products to contain lower amounts of sodium and still meet these same consumer desires.
One solution has been to substitute potassium chloride for sodium chloride. Unfortunately, potassium chloride can have a bitter aftertaste that negatively influences flavor, making this solution unfeasible for many food products.
Here at Asenzya, we took on these challenges and developed SaltEASE®. SaltEASE is a salt alternative that offers a solution to help meet the consumer demand for lower-sodium foods while maintaining flavor.
With SaltEASE You Can:
- Reduce sodium in formulations by up to 40%.
- Provide the same great flavor as salt.
- Eliminate the typical bitterness/aftertaste usually associated with potassium chloride.
- Easy to incorporate into existing formulas at a 1:1 replacement basis with salt.
If reducing sodium is of interest to you while maintaining current flavor, then SaltEASE may be a solution for your formulation. Reach out to us today and we can work with you to develop a product that will meet and exceed consumers expectations.
Interested in learning more about all of Asenzya’s product offerings? Reach out to us directly at email@asenzya.com for more information or take a look at our product capabilities page.
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