Supplements provide essential nutrients not found in food, such as vitamins and minerals (like thiamine hydrochloride, riboflavin phosphate or nicotinamide ), plant extracts or water-soluble vitamin analogues.
Water-soluble vitamin and mineral supplements often have unpleasant tastes or aftertastes that are hard to conceal with flavouring, though this study explored four effervescent nutritional supplements with different compositions to assess their sensory properties in terms of orthonasal odour perception, aftertaste persistence and aroma persistence.
Sourness
Sourness is a taste sensation caused by acids such as citric, malic and tartaric acids; these increase hydrogen ion concentrations to activate sour receptors on the tongue. Weak acids such as acetic acid can also induce this effect.
Acids play an integral part in food preservation by creating an environment unfavorable to pathogens, while they also have the power to increase flavor while altering nutritional profiles of foods. Furthermore, acids stimulate saliva production and gastric acid secretion which aid in digestion and absorption.
Sensory techniques, such as descriptive analysis, can be utilized to quantify and qualify perceptions of sourness for various nutritional supplements. However, it should be remembered that perception of sourness is subjective and will differ depending on who perceives it.
Sweetness
Nutritional supplements often experience negative perceptual sensations in terms of their taste, such as unpleasant aftertaste. This is one factor preventing consumers from accepting them as supplements; whether these take the form of tablets, chewables, supplements drinks or oral powders for oral consumption; their taste will ultimately depend on their functional ingredients.
As one example, mineral salts differ depending on their sweetness. Unfortunately, there is little scientific evidence supporting how altering diet sweetness could impact energy intake or body weight; only two intervention studies on this subject were completed and both had limitations such as short duration exposure time and small participant numbers (26). It is therefore evident that future research on this subject must take place.
Astringency
Astringency refers to a sensation of mouth drying or puckering that occurs with foods rich in polyphenols (red wine and green tea), tannins (coffee and soy) or metal salts like alums; this characteristic may also appear with some nutritional supplements.
Many believe that adding flavourings can effectively mask astringent tastes, potentially reducing additives that could potentially be harmful to health. But masking strategies require an in-depth knowledge of how negative sensory attributes interact and change over time – an approach combining conventional profiling with sequential appreciation ratings aligned with an ingestion process can provide invaluable insight.
Bitterness
Bitterness is an unpleasant, harsh flavor that falls outside the realm of salty or sweet tastes. Leafy greens such as kale and dandelion as well as unsweetened cocoa contain bitter notes; bitter tastes should generally be avoided but can add complexity and balance to functional formulations.
Utilising the cellular-based taste receptor functional assay and sensory analysis, we were able to compare cellular bitterness detection threshold values with concentrations seen in nutritional supplements studied for six bitter vitamins. Although human oral detection did not necessarily match up perfectly, particularly with regard to vitamins B1 (thiamine hydrochloride) and B6 (pyridoxine hydrochloride), low cellular bitterness detection threshold values suggest these supplements will likely not cause unpleasant aftertastes.
Metallic
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Dysgeusia may also be caused by taking antidepressants that alter taste perception in your mouth, or it could be an effect of Bell’s palsy or multiple sclerosis affecting central nervous system activity.
Prenatal vitamins, multivitamins containing copper, iron, and zinc supplements, and cold remedies containing zinc may leave your mouth with an unpleasant metallic flavor; usually this goes away as your body processes the supplements.
