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As regulatory pressure to reduce sodium intensifies, food manufacturers face the challenge of reformulating popular products without losing flavor appeal. Summer is a critical period for savory foods like barbecue meats, dips, and salty snacks, making salt reduction strategies especially important for brands seeking to meet health guidelines while satisfying consumer expectations.

To explore practical solutions, Food Ingredients First speaks with Daria Pashkova, product and marketing manager at Ohly. The company develops yeast-based ingredients designed to support sodium reduction by preserving savoury flavour profiles in demanding applications such as snacks and marinades." style="width: 300px;" class="fr-fir fr-dii">

Salt reduction challenges

Governments worldwide are introducing stricter sodium reduction targets and front-of-pack labeling rules to address links between salt intake, hypertension, and heart disease. For brands, this has raised the stakes on reformulating popular products.

“Salt is essential for enhancing flavor and appealing to consumers who enjoy savoury foods,” Pashkova notes. “But simply lowering salt content can drastically change overall taste perception and negatively impact the consumer experience.”

Studies have shown that substituting or reducing salt can make products taste flat or unbalanced, especially in barbecue sauces or marinades where salt not only seasons but also preserves. According to Pashkova, “When reformulating existing successful products, the challenge is even greater because salt reduction can result in products tasting unfamiliar, leading to poor consumer acceptance and declining sales.”

Yeast extracts as a natural flavor solution

A major strategy for maintaining consumer appeal lies in clean label ingredients that deliver natural flavor enhancement. Yeast extracts, derived through fermentation, are rich in glutamic acid, nucleotides and peptides — components that work synergistically to boost umami and perceived salinity, Pashkova explains.

“When yeast extracts are added to food, their glutamic acid content interacts with specific taste receptors on the tongue known as umami receptors. This interaction brings out the overall umami taste perception in the dish, reducing the need for salt.”

Unlike salt replacers that often come with trade-offs in flavor or mouthfeel (for example, potassium chloride’s metallic aftertaste), yeast extracts can be tailored to target off-notes.

“By utilizing different yeast strains and manipulating the amino acid and nucleotide content, we can design products that mask specific off-notes from ingredients like potassium chloride,” she says. “For potassium chloride, there is a lingering aftertaste that can be bitter or metallic. We use a specific strain that helps make other flavor components linger longer on the palate, thereby masking those off-tastes.”

Flexibility across applications

The versatility of yeast-based ingredients is key to their appeal for formulators working across different product types.

“There are not typically many challenges to utilising yeast extracts across applications like snacks and marinades,” Pashkova notes. “But there are limitations on how much sodium you can reduce in a product.”