Interview to Nadia Pedretti, Sales Manager of Prosol

1) Do you think is possible to reduce salt without quality loss? ¿How?

We think that using certain functional ingredients, as yeast extracts for example, it’s possible to reduce salt content and maintain a very good quality of the products. The functional properties of yeast extracts are mainly related to flavour (flavour enhancers or even pure flavour, masking bad taste or off-flavours). Free amino-acids, Peptides and Ribonucleic Acid/Nucleotides and their interactions with the recipe ingredients are at the origin of the flavour properties. Yeast Extract is a natural flavour ingredient with flavour enhancing animal origin ingredients, vegetal proteins and cheesy notes.

2) Why Yeast's extracts with nucleotides?

If salt is reduced or replaced into the food products, taste decreases. Yeast extracts with Nucleotides allow to decrease salt content and boosting the taste of food products providing a good mouthfeel profile. Besides 5’-GMP + 5’-IMP have the unique property to extend the taste sensation beyond the four basic tastes, giving the “Umami” taste perception. Umami is coming from a Japanese word meaning “delicious/savoury” and experimental data confirm that the receptor of this character is perceived through an independent coding system. Very low amounts of 5’-Nucleotides can improve the notes and the tasting profile of different recipes in products like soups, sauces, snacks and all savoury products.

 

3) What advantages gives yeast's extracts from a Marketing point of view?

Yeast is a product used since centuries in different food application and its functional properties are well known from everyone. A marketing advantage can be the very nice labelling: yeast extract or natural flavour in the finished products. Also with the new regulation that will be in force from January 2011, this indication of labelling won’t change.
Besides, the use of yeast extracts for salt decreasing or replacing in food products can be a strong claim in some applications.

4) Do you think the salt regulation is the beginning of a hard regulation in the Human Nutrition Food?

The attention to human health and the tackle of problems as salt reduction one, indicate that the tendency of the food industry is to develop more and more healthy foods as gluten free, sugar free foods and many others. Some of the indications dictated by the Organizations for Health are already becoming laws in certain countries. The care to some of the main human diseases due to foods are an indicator of the worry of the European and Worldwide Organization for Health for this kind of problems. The specify attention for the problem of salt intake let think that this care will be put also into others projects.