Can Salt Be Any Saltier?

Worried about too much sodium in your favorite restaurant dish or ready-to-eat supermarket meal? The food industry is hard at work trying to figure out a way to reduce salt in these foods without giving up on taste. In this post, I will highlight a few salt reduction technologies under development, although it will be quite a while before they hit the market.

Salt in the form of sodium chloride is important for maintaining the electrolyte balance in the body. Too little salt in diet, and you risk getting muscle cramps, dizziness and in the worst case, even brain damage. Runners who drink too much water instead of an electrolyte balanced drink like Gatorade risk life threatening injuries during a grueling long distance race because of low sodium levels. Excessive loss of liquids due to vomiting or diarrhea can also result in dangerously low sodium levels. Sodium is critical for life, and that is why our taste for saltiness in food is so highly evolved that without salt the food is completely unpalatable. No wonder the salt shaker has a prominent place on every dinner table.

Too much salt, on the other hand, is also not good. It is known to cause heart disease in the long run. Other reports have linked excessive salt to asthma, osteoporosis, heartburn, left ventricular hypertrophy (cardiac enlargement) and even death. In fact, ingesting very large amounts of salt was often used to commit suicide in ancient China (via Wikipedia)!

Look at the nutrition facts label of any packaged food and you will find high amounts of salt per serving (typically 20 -30% of the USDA recommended 2300 mg per day). Same goes for restaurant food as I recently wrote in a Five for Fridays article regarding reports of “dangerously high levels” of salt in chain restaurant meals. The food industry is under a lot of pressure from consumers and regulators to find ways to lower sodium levels in processed foods. It is not easy since scientists still do not fully understand the biological mechanism of how we perceive saltiness. Still, driven by market demand, there are a few novel approaches being pursued. Here is a short summary -

Chemical Methods

The easiest replacement for sodium chloride is potassium chloride, however it also has a bitter taste. As a result, some sodium chloride still needs to be added to block bitterness.

New bitterness blockers that reduce the activation of taste cells by bitter ingredients are under development. One example is Betrasalt^TM from a biotechnology company Redpoint Bio which is claimed to contain GRAS (FDA’s term for Generally Recognized as Safe) ingredients. They are positioning this proprietary additive for chicken soup, beef gravy, nacho flavor, vegetable juice and table salt.

Some chemicals such as menthyl lactate from Givaudan, which produce a “cooling effect” can also amplify the taste of saltiness at low amount of sodium. They have a few other cooling compounds which they are optimizing for salt enhancement.

Physical Methods

By reducing the size of salt crystals using a freeze drying method, Leatherhead Food International (LFI) has shown that these crystals dissolve faster on the tongue which produces a stronger salty sensation at lower concentration. Eminate Ltd., a partner of the Nottingham University of UK has developed a proprietary spray-drying technology to make nano-sized salt crystals. These salt crystals could work well when sprinkled on chips and fries.

LFI is also developing double emulsions in which a water droplet  is enclosed inside an oil droplet which itself enclosed inside another water droplet. When salt is added to the outside water layer in small amounts, taste testers reported a stronger salt sensation. These double emulsions could be used in salad dressings.

Biochemical Methods

Senomyx, a San Diego based flavor research company, has identified proteins responsible for salt perception in the taste buds. They are now using this protein to develop testing methods which help in developing new salt enhancing flavor molecules.

A milk-based mineral blend produced by “milk cracking” has been developed by Armor Proteines who is marketing the additive as Lactosalt Optitaste for use in bread, cheese and processed meats. They claim that it can result in 25% lower sodium levels.

Salty and Umami (savory) tastes work together on the tongue to produce similar sensations. One approach to reducing salt is to enhance the umami taste. By studying broths made from fermented Bonito, a fish from the mackerel family popular in Japan, Givaudan has developed new enhancers for umami sensation which can be used in reduced salt formulations.

DSM has developed yeast extracts that also provide the umami sensation in low sodium formulations suited for breads, cheese and cereals. They claim that their Maxarom® and Maxarite^TM products can lower salt by 25 – 50%.

No doubt, we are likely to see intense research and competition in salt reduction technology in the future. Your best bet of course is to reduce consumption of processed foods and instead rely more on fresh, home made meals where you can control the amount of salt. But it may not be practical all the time as you try to manage the nutritional needs of your family while running a buys life. In this regard, this trend is very encouraging.

What do you think?

Photo source – Luca Galuzzi, Wikipedia
©2009 Littlestomaks.com

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Tagged as: Bitterness, Potassium Chloride, salt, Sodium, Sodium Chloride, Taste, Umami