Key Insights
- The demand for and the price of animal protein products have spiked in recent years.
- Plant-based proteins are still relatively cheap, but consumers often dislike their grainy textures and beany, bitter, and cardboard-like flavors.
- Fermentation, synthetic chemistry, and mouthfeel research could open avenues to neutrally flavored—or even tasty—plant-based protein.
Chicago—Standing at a booth at IFT FIRST, a food science expo, I take a sip of kuding tea sample and wince. The concoction is profoundly bitter, thanks to saponins and other compounds. Evelyn Su, founder and CEO of Sino Lion USA, stirs a spoonful of white powder into my cup. I sip again and now detect a subtle sweetness—the bitterness is gone.
“It’s night and day,” Su said. The powder is one of the NeverBitter ingredients, which are made by an affiliate company and used in products such as sports drinks in China. This ingredient contains ring-shaped molecules called cyclodextrins that can trap foul-tasting compounds. The team tailors the size of the cyclodextrin rings to capture a given off-putting molecule and prevent it from interacting with a person’s taste buds, Su said. The approach is one of many from food companies and academic researchers that could help make plant proteins more palatable.
