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Why many low-fat products fail

The ability to taste fat could be the reason many low-fat products struggle in popularity over time, according to sensory science researchers.

Deakin’s newly formed Centre of Advanced Sensory Science has found there is overwhelming evidence for the tongue’s ability to detect fat, suggesting it is the sixth taste.

“There is great potential for the food and health industries to develop new low energy products using the knowledge on fat taste,” says Professor Russell Keast, head of the Centre of Advanced Sensory Science.

“If we think about the food industry in particular, there’s a lot of low fat foods that were put out for dieting back in the 80’s and 90’s that had subsequently failed because over time they failed to deliver in terms of what the consumer wants, which is the acceptance and liking over time of foods.

“This presumably is because fat has a taste component to it wasn’t taken into account.”

“Fat has multiple effects in foods, it provides mouthfeel, acts as a flavour carrier and helps with flavour release,” Keast says.

“What we are saying is that in addition to those attributes, fat also activates taste receptors. If fat taste had been considered during low fat food development, perhaps there would not have been so many low fat failures.

“Part of the role of having a taste is embodying the fix that the nutrients bring to the food so if you reduce them or take them out, the sensing mechanisms that we have to identify those nutrients isn’t necessarily there.”

While failed low-fat foods were able to mimic the mouth-feel and flavour-release properties of fat, what they weren’t able to mimic is the actual fat or fatty acid activating the taste receptors and the responses that happens from that activation.

“The key is to find some of these fatty acids that are higher activating. If they are higher activating then you can effectively reduce the level of fat in foods but still activate those taste receptors that provide the feelings that we want from fat and that would in the long term have a great benefit for the development of low fat foods that are sustainable over the long term for consumers.”

The evidence that fat is a sixth taste has opened the door on low-fat product innovation, but Keast says more research still needs to be done.

“We don’t know which fatty acids are higher activating and that’s going to take a bit of effort to work out but I would say that the dairy industry in particular should be trying to take advantage of this type of research because they have fractured the first fatty acid profile from bovine milk.”

“It’s not an easy thing to discover, it will take time and effort on part of the dairy industry and maybe even the meat industry to be able to find what fatty acids are best to apply into foods.”

The review, ‘Is fat the 6th taste primary. Evidence and implication’, is published in Flavour Journal.

 

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