You Try to Eat Healthier, But How to Avoid a Bad Taste in Your Mouth?

We are all familiar with the high-calorie dishes during the holidays. And many of them are made with meat, adding fat as well. That’s why a lot of people go vegan in January. But are you sure you want to do a vegan January? You may have the best of intentions, but how do you get past the bad taste of some of the products?

How do off-flavors form?

Most of today’s vegan products are plant-based, but that doesn’t always mean they taste good. When it comes down to salt, fat and other content, there are many published articles that question the healthiness of vegan foods. This is, mostly, because plants don’t contain a lot of fat. However, fat is the carrier for flavors. The food industry spends billions of dollars to make a vegan burger taste “umami,” which describes the taste of meat.

“Umami, which is also known as monosodium glutamate, is one of the core fifth tastes: sweet, sour, bitter and salty. Umami means ‘essence of deliciousness’ in Japanese, and its taste is often described as the meaty, savory deliciousness that deepens flavor.” [1]

There are millions of different vegan foods that made it to market during the last decade. However, their unpleasant, intrinsic flavor and odor have been the major obstacles limiting consumers’ acceptance. These off-flavors are often described as “green,” “grassy,” “beany,” “fatty” and “bitter.”

Highlighting off-flavor volatiles

This review highlights the presence and formation of common off-flavor volatiles (aldehydes, alcohols, ketones, pyrazines, furans) and non-volatiles (phenolics, saponins, peptides, alkaloids) from a variety of plant-based foods, including legumes (e.g., lentil, soy, pea), fruits (e.g., apple, grape, watermelon) and vegetables (e.g., carrot, potato, radish). These compounds are formed through various pathways, including lipid oxidation, ethanol fermentation and Maillard reaction (and Strecker degradation). [2]

Since off-flavors are a big topic, there are industries that spend millions of dollars to cover up for these issues. Functional ingredients and masking are common techniques to deal with off-flavors. [3] But it is not easy to betray human tastebuds. A masked rancid taste might end up as a “coconut flavor,” which is also not wanted in a vegan burger.

Now, you might think that 99 percent cocoa-based chocolate is vegan, and you are right. But free of off-flavors? The answer is no!

“It was found that 2-methoxyphenol, 3- and 4-methylphenol, 3- and 4-ethylphenol and 3-propylphenol are responsible for the ham-like smoky off-flavor. The moldy, musty off-flavor is mainly caused by geosmin and the coconut-like off-flavor by massoialactone.” [4]

The list of off-flavors is endless. A brand of orange juice can be considered “good” in terms of following food regulations; however, it may render a bitter aftertaste. This might come from oxidation. The oxygen penetrates the packaging into the juice and is responsible for the bitterness. So other industries, such as packaging, are involved in testing for off-flavors as well.

Contamination in vegan food

Off-flavors aren’t the only issue. A human doesn’t eat what tastes strange or bad. But some things you can’t taste, and they also are not healthy. Recently, there were very high concentrations of MOSH/MOAH (mineral oil saturated hydrocarbons/mineral oil aromatic hydrocarbons) in Germany in pesto, olive oil, chocolate Santa Clauses and vegan cold cuts. If you would like to learn more, click on the related blog post.

The difficulty with off-flavors is always the concentration — the peaks are very small. When it comes to sensitivity, the human nose detects off-flavors to a higher degree compared to a GC-MS. This is why chemists around the world spend a lot of time trying to find out how to detect off-flavors to the highest level of sensitivity.

If this is one of the issues you are trying to resolve, join one of our free webinars on off-flavors:

On-demand webinar: Off-flavor analysis in food — in German:
On-demand webinar: Off-flavor analysis in food — English:

If you would like to learn how to detect off-flavors immediately, read this blog post:

Conclusion

Resolutions to eat healthier are great! But some “healthy” options taste better than others. Consuming products that are not heavily processed— or leading a simple vegetarian lifestyle— can help you avoid having to deal with weird off-flavors.

The Thermo Fisher Scientific team wishes you all the best for 2023, and we look forward to seeing you in the community for more interesting topics this year.