Have you ever tried a product that tasted not quite right? Maybe it's too sweet, not enough salty, or the flavours are just flat? That's because fat, sweetness, saltiness, and acidity do a lot more than functionality.
They actually shape how flavours are released and perceived. And getting that wrong is one of the top reasons why food and drink products fail.
Welcome back to the Food Lab Podcast. I'm your host, Manon Galizzi, and this is part one of our mini series, why your product isn't selling like it should. Today, we are digging into the fundamental ingredients that make or break flavours.
Are you a food or drink business owner struggling with negative reviews, decreasing sales, or the overwhelming task of product development? Join me as we dive into the science of crafting exceptional products.
With a decade of industry experience including a deep dive into the world of flavours, I will help you perfect your flavour profile, streamline your product development, and unlock the path to retailer listing and exciting customer reviews. Stop wasting time and resources and start creating amazing product that are good for the people and the planet.
If you enjoy the podcast and would like to hear more from me, don't forget to follow the podcast and leave a positive review.
Okay. So here is the situation.
You have a decrease in sales, and the reviews of some of your product are very negative, especially in term of taste. So some of the reviews may say just "it doesn't taste good", or it may say "it's too sweet", "too salty", or "not enough of this or not enough of that".
It may be a factor that the flavour itself is not right. So, for example, if your product says "orange flavoured" and it actually doesn't taste like orange, that may happen, or it can be that the flavours are not strong enough.
So you clearly know that there is something that is not quite right with your product and you need to fix it quite urgently.
So before you jump to the flavourings, especially if you're using flavourings or any other things that bring the flavour in your product. Before jumping straight to that, I want you to step back, take a deep breath, and focus on the base first.
The main tools that shape the perception of flavours in term of its characteristics, in term of its intensity, or its longevity in a food or drink are fats, sweetness, saltiness, and acidity. And note that I didn't say sugar or salt. I'm taking, it more general in terms of sweetness and saltiness perception. Okay? There is a difference.
As a little reminder, we use fat, sweetness, saltiness, and acidity mainly for their functionality. So it can be the fact that they bring mouthfeel or texture. So they can bring creaminess, richness, indulgence, crunch, or soft, for example.
They can bring something visual, so we all know that amazing glossy finish or a lovely caramel color.
It also help extend the shelf life of a food and drink product. For example, it can decrease the water activity or decrease its pH.
Another very important factor we all know is they bring flavours by itself and especially fat, but they are also flavours enhancers.
And if you don't get the balance right, either you put too much of them or not enough, then it's gonna have a huge impact on the flavours and the flavours may not shine at all. And you will never get that perfect flavour profile that you're looking for your product.
And we have to bear in mind that this is one of the main reasons why consumers don't buy again a product is because of how it tastes like. If they don't like the taste of it, even if they can't explain exactly why they don't like it, if they don't like it, if the balance is not right, if the flavours is not right, they will never buy it again, even if it's a very functional product. Okay?
They may buy only for the functionality, but nowadays, there are so many competition. They may buy your product for a while, but they may find something that tastes better and have the same functionality. So for example, hydration is a big topic at the moment. Very hot. There's a lot of drinks that promote hydration with a lot of electrolytes in there. If few years ago you were the only one having this kind of product, the fact that some of them are very salty, some of them has a mineral taste, and some of them even have this higher mouthfeel, This few years back was fine, whatever the flavours were in.
But nowadays, there are so much competition around hydration and electrolytes that just having this basic functionality of hydrating yourself, especially after a workout, for example, is not enough.
You have to distinguish yourself. You have to be better than the competitors, and it will be because of the taste, because of the flavours.
So what happen when you put too little of either the fat, the sweetness, the saltiness, or the acidity?
Well, first of all, the flavours are not going to shine. They are gonna be muted or they're gonna feel very flat.
If we take any of the reduced sugar product, a jam, for example, because of this unbalance and the acidity may be a little bit stronger, you will have a lack of fruitiness. Even though it may be more on packaging, more fruit than the full sugar one, it's gonna be a lack of something.
The flavour profile is also gonna be very different, and I experienced that firsthand when I was working in the flavour house. And one of the most difficult challenge I had was when I was working on the low sugar product, and I was working with strawberry flavours.
So I was selecting the most jammiest strawberry flavours I could find. I think the product was either I think I worked on muffins and yogurt. I even if I put the most jammiest flavour profile of all, the strawberry perception when I've tried in a product, was still very green.
Green is a term that we use to describe something that is very unripe. So it is very, like, unripe tomato, but for some people, it can taste very grassy like a fresh cut grass. So it's different for a lot of people, but we know we always talk about the same reference.
So when I say green, it's gonna taste like cut grass or very very unripe tomato and in this case a very very very unripe strawberry. So whatever flavour I was putting in that sugar reduced product, I always ended up having a very not good type of strawberry. In a yogurt or in a muffin, you don't want to have this very green, unripe, cut grass type of flavour profile. You want a very cooked and sugary type of strawberry, and I could never get it right. And it wasn't because of the flavours. It was because the base wasn't sweet enough, and the flavours couldn't shine through properly.
And I had the same same problem when I was working at McVitie's and they were working on a non-HFSS digestive biscuits. So you can imagine how challenging it was to recreate the iconic McVitie's digestive biscuits but in a non-HFSS way.
For some people who don't know what non-HFSS is, it's non high in fat sugar and salt. And it never was exactly the same. And the more sugar we tried to reduce in this biscuit, the more it tasted of all of these green notes. Sometimes it tasted a bit like hay to me. So hay, green, almost something that was not cooked through.
So all of the brown notes were not there. They were they're really lacking. And you can try all of the flavourings that are supposed to help. There was a lot of flavour enhancers, sweetness enhancers, sweet modulators, and anything like that to try to help and try to boost the sweetness perception of it. But first of all, the sweetness is completely different according to what you add.
You know that if you add table sugar or if you had stevia or if you have maple or honey, the sweetness perception and how you perceive that sweetness is gonna be completely different, especially when you had something that is not natural like sucralose, aspartame, ace k.
The brain pick up on what the hell is this? This is not sugar. So just to conclude that when there is not enough of something, especially huge things like fat or sugar, the flavours will never shine through. Okay?
This is why it's so important to fix the base first and find your compromises, and then find the right flavours that go with this base.
So what happen when you put too much of fat, sweetness, saltiness, and acidity?
Well, the first thing, for example, with fat is the more fat you have, the more it's gonna coat your mouth and the more delayed the flavour will be. And this is especially true when it's saturated fat like cocoa butter, butter, coconut oil.
The second thing with high sweetness or high saltiness is they will dull the flavour. They will overpower the flavour. They will decrease the complexity, make it very hard, very, very hard for the flavour to shine.
One of the example I can give you is I work with one of my clients to create some electrolytes and the base was obviously very salty. So it wasn't just table salt. It was all of the different minerals that give that perception of saltiness.
And it was so, so, so salty that none of us could drink 500ml of it. So the founder has to rework the base with the supplier and find the right balance between the nutritional value and the taste. He had to compromise of, "I wanted that amount of minerals to be able to have the perfect hydration solution". But in the meantime, if no one can drink a whole shaker of it, there is no point.
So after you decrease and rebalanced the recipe, then we had a look on the flavour.
And one of the first thing straightaway is acidity. Just a tiny bit of acidity can lift up all of the flavours without adding any maskers or sweetness perception or all of these extravagant flavourings or solutions that sometime you can see from suppliers.
Just a simple, simple, simple touch of acidity was enough to completely lift the product and the flavours, making much more fresh, juicy, and refreshing. So because of the amount of minerals and salt perception, the flavours really, really, really struggle to shine through.
So you may think "oh, I'm gonna put more salt and more sugar because they are flavour enhancers and they boost all of the flavours and job done".
Unfortunately, when there is too much of a thing, it's the same for everything in life, it's just gonna kill the flavours and you will have to put shit loads of this flavour to actually taste it, if that makes sense.
So how to find the right balance?
The first thing, as I mentioned, is to start by fixing the base. If it's too sweet, too salty, too fatty, too acidic, or not enough acidic before even looking at the flavours.
Look at the reviews, have one to one with some of your most loyal customers and ask them.
It doesn't need to be described very precisely. It's just a matter of "what do you think of the sweetness?" "What do you think of the saltiness?" "What do you think of this? What do you think of that?" Or mainly, "what do you think the problem is?"
So I know it's not as easy as it sounds because all of these ingredients have a functionality. So you may not be able to decrease as much as the sweetness as you want or the fattiness. It may completely change the texture, the shelf life of the product, or you are very limited with your nutritional value. So you may not have a lot of room to be able to change everything.
So once you have made the change with the base, this is where you focus on the flavours. And this is where you're gonna try different flavours that fit your base and not the other way around. So if we come back to our strawberry example, does a confectionery strawberry, a cooked strawberry, or fresh strawberry fit better that new base. And once you have selected the flavour that fits the base, you may have to readjust again the sweetness, the saltiness, the acidity, and the fattiness.
I know it sounds counterintuitive. You may think, "well, I can just start with the flavour and then change everything in the base". Trust me. Trust the process. Okay? This is how it works best.
Start with the base, lock the base, find the flavours that fit the base, and then you may tweak slightly.
And this is because the flavourings that you're gonna add in it, or if for example, you're using fruit pieces, juices, purees, or anything like that, they will bring something themselves.
They will have even a flavouring may have some molecules that trigger sweetness perception, and vanilla is one of them. Vanilla flavouring are used widely because they bring some creaminess and some sweetness perception.
It doesn't mean that they're actual sugar in that flavouring. It's just a perception. Think about how the brain react to something. If, for example, you see a drink that is blue, what is the first thing that you have in mind? The brain will start to anticipate what it's gonna taste like.
"Well, a drink that is blue is not natural. It's very blue, so it may be very, very sweet. The only thing that I know tastes blue is a blue raspberry flavour, which, again, doesn't really exist".
So it will start anticipating. And that's why when you do this test of having a different flavour to the different color, So for example, you have a flavoured water that looks red but it tastes actually like apple or you have a yellow flavoured water that tastes raspberry. The brain is very, very confused and really struggle to recognise what flavour it is.
So all of your senses are in play when you taste something and how your brain just pick every pieces of the puzzle, get it together to create an image in his head of what actually you are tasting. So it's just perception.
And that's why each of us have a different palate and we all taste something that is completely different. Okay. Just something on the side.
Once you have creating that perfect balance, so like I said, you have tweaked maybe your product was a little bit too sweet. So you decrease the sweetness. You're quite okay. Now you try different vanilla flavourings.
For example, you pick the ones that are very creamy or very, very artificial vanillin, for example. You think this is the best flavours that fit your product. Then you just think, "okay., this perception of sweetness is just slightly too strong still because I've added this flavouring. So I'm just gonna decrease a little bit".
And boom, you have the perfect balance between all of your senses and the flavours.
Then the last thing you have to do is to ask again your consumers. Send them free sample. Tell them what they think so then you have the confirmation of you have done the right changes to your product.
This is the end of our episode. I hope you enjoy it. I hope it was helpful. Let me know in the comments.
In part two of our mini series, we will focus on fixing your product with the flavours, of course. And it's not just how your product taste, but it's how we can drive loyalty, repeat purchase, and long term success. So be sure to dive in when the episode is out.
Thank you for listening. If you got value from this episode, follow the podcast and subscribe to my newsletter for more tips and knowledge about food and drink product development.
And I will see you in the next episode. Bye.
