For manufacturers of fortified food, one of the trickiest challenges can be getting the taste just right. Adding vitamins and micronutrients to certain foods can have excellent nutritional benefits, but oftentimes those micronutrients can alter the flavor of the product.
Better than adding sweeteners
Whether it’s a subtle change or a potent one, many consumers would prefer not to notice any unpleasant flavors in their foods. They do want the nutritional benefits of micronutrients, but they don’t want to notice them. For fortified food manufacturers, there is no option of removing micronutrients from their products. The solution needs to come from elsewhere. Adding sweeteners can mask bitter flavors, but adding too much sweetener can very easily counteract the intended health benefits of the added nutrients. A better solution than added sweeteners is flavor masking.
Flavor masking is a delicate process by which certain balancing flavors are added to offset other undesirable off flavors. The concept of taste masking is not entirely new, but it has taken a much more significant role in recent years with new developments across industries. With the sudden prominence of products like plant-based proteins, protein powders, and, of course, fortified foods, food manufacturers all over the globe are working diligently to create new, healthy food options that meet the needs of a changing nutritional landscape. But across the industry, many of these manufacturers are running into the problem of off-tastes in their products.
You may be asking yourself, if flavor masking is so great then why do off tastes still happen? If taste masking is such a simple solution, surely everyone should be using a masking flavor in all of their fortified foods. The answer is that flavor masking is not always a simple process. There is no such thing as a universal masking flavor or a one-size-fits-all formula. Flavor masking requires the correct balance for each unique recipe to make sure that the desired flavor is preserved. Luckily for those manufacturers, there are also flavor producers available to take over for them when it comes to manufacturing effective masking flavors. A flavor supplier specializes in developing just that: flavor. And the role of flavor producers today is as important as ever, as more and more food manufacturers are faced with new nutritional and dietary challenges in an ever-changing world.
OSF is the specialist of flavor masking
Flavor producers have both the resources and expertise to develop flavors and flavor masking for all sorts of fortified foods. And responsible flavor providers will also work to ensure that all of their ingredients remain healthy and natural so as to not interfere with the nutritional and ethical standards of their food manufacturing partners.
OSF Flavors is one such flavor manufacturer. For four decades, OSF has been on the cutting edge of flavor production, holding itself to the highest standards of both innovation and integrity.