Symlife™ taste balancing –
making good-for-you products taste great
Tasty health – a top priority today
Over the past decades, consumers, retailers, and regulators have grown increasingly aware of the detrimental health effects associated with immoderate sugar, sodium, and fat intake. They can cause obesity and cardiovascular diseases. Government bodies and health institutions are advocating a reduction of these foods. This has resulted in a strong global push for food and beverage manufacturers to reformulate their products. The overall shift towards health benefits has also brought a trend towards fortification and enrichment. It aims at achieving good-for you products. Consumers often deem them more attractive.
Taste continues to present key challenge
While consumers desire good-for-you products, taste continues to drive their preferences. In this context, taste perception forms a complex process. It involves many multisensory interactions. Any change in the food or beverage matrix influences these interactions. Often, this results in a taste gap that ultimately affects consumer preference. For instance: Sugar, salt, and fat reduction may lead to a loss of sweetness or saltiness perception, mouthfeel and body, a decrease in overall taste intensity, as well as revealing bitterness, or astringency The use of ingredient replacers like sweeteners results in different taste dynamics during the time of consumption and the addition of off-notes The fortification with nutrients and the addition of proteins, including plant-based proteins, may lead to off-notes such as bitterness and astringency.
Holistic approach to bridge the taste gap for taste, nutrition, and health solutions
Symrise maintains a long-standing research and development program to deliver against this macro-trend and its complexities. This way, it is supporting manufacturers in their efforts to offer great tasting food and beverages with low or no sugar content. The extensive Symlife™ taste balancing toolbox provides a holistic approach to bridge taste gaps for the development of taste, nutrition, and health solutions. By rebuilding and optimizing the overall taste profile of products, the taste balancing solutions of Symrise help to create winning tastes and to drive consumer preference. The Symlife™ solutions also help to make products with fortified nutritional profiles taste great. Adding desirable ingredients like fibers, vitamins or minerals and removing fewer desirable ingredients like sugar, sodium or fat can lead to bad taste effects. Taste balancing supports in making those good-for-you products taste great. It masks undesirable notes and rebalances the overall profile of the product. This includes masking of bitterness, astringency, acidity, and off notes or boosting of flavor profile impact, creaminess, mouthfeel, or sweetness. This way, the solutions additionally contribute to a healthier lifestyle by making healthy eating enjoyable. To achieve this, the Symlife™ taste balancing toolbox offers solutions to rebalance sugar, fat, and sodium perception, to build umami, mask off-notes and add sensations. It pursues the objective to optimize the overall taste profile of a product to keep great taste in good-for-you products across categories. This ranges from beverages to dairy applications, sweet, culinary and snack products.
Rebalancing overall taste for sugar reduced products
To tackle sugar reduction, food and beverage manufacturers commonly employ two different approaches. Either they aim for a partial reduction of sugar, potentially with the addition of sweeteners. Or they aim for a total reduction by entirely taking out sugar from the formulation and replacing it with sweeteners. Still, to date, real candidates to fully replace sugar are missing. Any modification on sweetening systems impacts the product’s overall taste experience. This includes the basic taste, flavor profile (e.g., the intensity or fruitiness of a strawberry taste), mouthfeel and sweet taste dynamics (e.g., sweetness onset and lingering).
Sugar reduced products that consumers love
Sweeteners in general can close the sweetness intensity gap in sugar reduced products. Concurrently, it takes more than a single substance or a combination of sweeteners alone to rebalance the sweetness profile and overall sweetness dynamics. One must consider the entire taste dynamics, like onset, mouthfeel, and masking of lingering aftertaste. Here, the tailored Symlife™ solutions help to rebalance the overall taste profile according to each manufacturers’ unique needs. For example, manufacturers can carry out a small sugar reduction meeting all sweetness dynamics of sugar. For this, they need to optimize the overall taste with a taste balancing flavor and potentially some adjustments in the food matrix. Higher sugar reduction or a 100% sweetener based sweetening system required something more. It might need a taste optimization with a combination of taste balancing flavors, masking flavors, sweeteners, and other complementary ingredients. Also, the food matrix may require adjustments.
Symrise key differentiators
In this context, Symrise sets itself apart with the broadest range of natural taste balancing solutions. It tailors them to the customers’ product bases. These solutions combine the best of nature with the best of science to support natural and healthier diets. Symrise owns a unique IP portfolio of natural taste balancing solutions. It includes industry leading patent strength in optimizing sweet taste profiles and rebalancing mouthfeel in sugar reduced products. Additionally, the experts develop natural taste balancing materials from side streams. This enables them to support a circular economy. Also, they are continuously researching in an in-house selection, breeding and cultivation program. Another strength lies in the in-depth consumer and market understanding of Symrise. Consumer-centricity provides the key to help manufacturers deliver satisfying product experiences and enable agile reactions to evolving trends. To generate these insights Symrise works with a broad variety of proprietary and external tools. This includes the proprietary Trendscope™ study to identify product, ingredient, and flavor trends for products low in sugar. Also, tools such as Symscript™ support the analysis of consumer preferences. The in-house sensory language systematically describes sensory gaps and the ideal taste profile of products. To enable full taste enjoyment in reformulated products, it consequently requires a high application expertise. Symrise understands the interactions and synergistic effects of taste balancing tools and food matrices. This application know-how and analytical capabilities enable it to tailor taste solutions according to the specific end uses and formula needs. Food and beverage manufacturers received solutions that work in their end product, drive preference, and give them a unique edge to drive product recognition. Symrise also trusts in a close collaboration approach. It ensures speed and agility in delivering tailored solutions by engaging manufacturers at an early stage. This helps understand their specific needs. It also facilitates applying their cross- functional capabilities to deliver unique taste solutions. They meet the requirements reg. cost-in-use, labeling, and taste performance. On top, Symrise can support with its strong regulatory expertise. Expert teams help customers navigate the complex regulatory landscape to determine market relevant labeling and on-pack claims.
Symlife™ taste balancing for great tasting good-for-you products
In a nutshell, Symrise offers all-in-one support for its customers. This enables them to create good-for-you products with the full taste enjoyment of a sweet product. The Symlife™ portfolio supports in balancing taste in low and no sugar products and optimizes taste and thereby drives consumer preference overall. This ability comes from dedicated long-term research activities in this field and a holistic, global approach to innovation. Also, contributing are deep insights into consumer needs, processes, and product development. Symrise possess a unique taste expertise at molecular level to act as partner of choice. It delivers natural taste balancing solutions for great tasting good-for-you products.
Author: Leif Jago
Junior Marketing Manager
Global Marketing Food & Beverage
Taste Nutrition & Health
