Sodium chloride taste

Sensory perception is both quaUtative and quantitative. The taste of sucrose and the smell of linalool are two different kinds of sensory perceptions and each of these sensations can have different intensities. Sweet, bitter, salty, fmity, floral, etc, are different flavor quaUties produced by different chemical compounds the intensity of a particular sensory quaUty is deterrnined by the amount of the stimulus present. The saltiness of a sodium chloride solution becomes more intense if more of the salt is added, but its quaUty does not change. However, if hydrochloric acid is substituted for sodium chloride, the flavor quahty is sour not salty. For this reason, quaUty is substitutive, and quantity, intensity, or magnitude is additive (13). The sensory properties of food are generally compHcated, consisting of many different flavor quaUties at different intensities. The first task of sensory analysis is to identify the component quahties and then to determine their various intensities. 

A persistent idea is that there is a very small number of flavor quaUties or characteristics, called primaries, each detected by a different kind of receptor site in the sensory organ. It is thought that each of these primary sites can be excited independently but that some chemicals can react with more than one site producing the perception of several flavor quaUties simultaneously (12). Sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami quaUties are generally accepted as five of the primaries for taste sucrose, hydrochloric acid, sodium chloride, quinine, and glutamate, respectively, are compounds that have these primary tastes. Sucrose is only sweet, quinine is only bitter, etc saccharin, however, is slightly bitter as well as sweet and its Stevens law exponent is 0.8, between that for purely sweet (1.5) and purely bitter (0.6) compounds (34). There is evidence that all compounds with the same primary taste characteristic have the same psychophysical exponent even though they may have different threshold values (24). The flavor of a complex food can be described as a combination of a smaller number of flavor primaries, each with an associated intensity. A flavor may be described as a vector in which the primaries make up the coordinates of the flavor space. 

Table 2 Hsts examples of compounds with taste and their associated sensory quaUties. Sour taste is primarily produced by the presence of hydrogen ion slightly modified by the types of anions present in the solution, eg, acetic acid is more sour than citric acid at the same pH or molar concentration (43). Saltiness is due to the salts of alkaU metals, the most common of which is sodium chloride. However, salts such as cesium chloride and potassium iodide are bitter potassium bromide has a mixed taste, ie, salty and bitter (44). Thus saltiness, like sourness, is modified by the presence of different anions but is a direct result of a small number of cations.

Seawater. Salt extraction from seawater is done by most countries having coastlines and weather conducive to evaporation. Seawater is evaporated in a series of concentration ponds until it is saturated with sodium chloride. At this point over 90% of the water has been removed, and some impurities, CaSO and CaCO, have been crystallized. This brine, now saturated in NaCl, is transferred to crystallizer ponds where salt precipitates on the floor of the pond as more water evaporates. Brine left over from the salt crystallizers is called bitterns because of its bitter taste. Bitterns is high in MgCl2, MgSO, and KCl. In some isolated cases, eg, India and China, magnesium and potassium compounds have been commercially extracted, but these represent only a small fraction of total world production. 

Brines maybe, as the name suggests, solutions of inorganic salts in water, and the two in general use are sodium chloride and calcium chloride. Of these, the former is compatible with most foodstuffs and can be used in direct contact or in circumstances where the brine may come into contact with the product. Calcium chloride has an unpleasant taste and cannot be permitted to contaminate foods. 

There is a vast range of aqueous organic pollutants with a wide toxicity profile. Some, e.g. polychlorinated biphenyls, certain herbicides, fungicides and pesticides, and organo-mercury compounds, are persistent and may bioaccumulate in the food chain. Trace contaminants such as sodium chloride, iron and phenols (especially if chlorinated) may also impart a taste to water. Typical consent levels for industrial discharges are provided in Table 13.10. 

Trace contaminants such as sodium chloride, iron and phenols (especially if chlorinated) may also impart a characteristic taste if water is subsequently used for drinking purposes. 

Curculin which is extracted with 0.5 M sodium chloride from the fruits of Curculigo latifolia and purified by ammonium sulphate fractionation, CM-sepharose ion-exchange chromatography and gel filtration.The protein acts as a low calorie sweetener and has a maximum sweetness equal to 0.35 M of sucrose. In addition to its sweetness, curculin also has taste modifying abilities since water and sour substances elicit a sweet taste after consumption of curculin. Currently, there is no other protein that has both sweet taste and taste modifying abilities. 

Some attempts to reduce sodium chloride intake have been carried out. The first is to use some socUum chloride substitutes. Pottasium chloride is widely used for this purpose. However, pottasium chloride is not thought as perfect sodium chloride substitute because it contains bitter taste. Okai and his associates have synthesized several salty peptides (5). These peptides are expected to be good for hypertension, gestosis, diabetes mellitus and other deseases because they contain no sodium ions. These peptides, however, are not expected to be used as sodium chloride substitutes immediately because of the difficulty of in their synthesis and their cost. Although they are struggling to establish a new synthetic method of peptides in a mass production system with reasonable costs and to improve the salty potency of peptides, they have not dissolved this problem. Since the threshold value of ionic taste is around 1 mM regardless their kinds, it seems to be very difficult to prepare an artificial sodium... 

Reduction of the sodium chloride level can result in taste problems and flavour shifts. There are several approaches to maintain salt taste. Most often, potassium chloride is used, because it shows the most prominent salty taste of those applicable inorganic salts. Lithium chloride is the most salty salt but cannot be used for toxicological reasons. Most consumers, however, complain about the bitter, chalky taste of KCl-containing formulations. Development of sodium-reduced products using mineral salts is a challenge and the whole product formula has often to be adapted [25]. Therefore, the main focus of the research was the search for masking compounds or technologies to cover the bad taste of KCl, e.g. phenolic acids and derivatives [26] and lactisol [27]. 

Sodium chloride—table salt—makes everything from french fries to popcorn taste better. But is a sprinkle of salt as valuable as money People all over the ancient world thought it was. In the eleventh century a.d., people in China stamped little cakes of salt with a royal seal and used them like coins. Roman soldiers were given personal supplies of salt as part of their pay. The word "salary" comes from the Latin words solarium argentum, or "salt money."... 

There are a few elements in these two groups that sometimes cause health problems because they are very similar to nearby elements. For instance, a toxic type of strontium can increase the risk of bone cancer and leukemia. Strontium, just one space below calcium in the table, is so similar to calcium that the body is sometimes fooled into absorbing it like calcium in bones and teeth. The similarities between elements can also be useful, as in the case of potassium chloride. People with high blood pressure and certain heart or kidney diseases need less sodium in their diets to stay healthy. Instead of sprinkling regular table salt or sodium chloride on their meals, they may use potassium chloride for a very similar salty taste. 

Infants with salt-wasting CAH require mineralocorticoid replacement therapy, usually with fludrocortisone (9oc-fluorohydrocortisone). In addition, they require sodium chloride (1-2 g/day) since the sodium content of both breast milk and common infant formulas is only sufficient to meet the requirements of healthy infants (White and Speiser, 2000). Older children often acquire a taste for salty foods and do not require daily sodium chloride tablets. Plasma renin activity may be used to monitor mineralocorticoid and sodium replacement. 

A first requirement for a substance to produce a taste is that it be water soluble. The relationship between the chemical structure of a compound and its taste is more easily established than that between structure and smell. In general, all acid substances are sour. Sodium chloride and other salts are salty, but as constituent atoms get bigger, a bitter taste develops. Potassium bromide is both salty and bitter, and potassium iodide is predominantly bitter. Sweetness is a property of sugars and related compounds but also of lead acetate, beryllium salts, and many other substances such as the artificial sweeteners saccharin and cyclamate. Bitterness is exhibited by alkaloids such as quinine, picric acid, and heavy metal salts. 

The salty taste is best exhibited by sodium chloride. It is sometimes claimed that the taste of salt by itself is unpleasant and that the main purpose of salt as a food component is to act as a flavor enhancer or flavor potentiator. The taste of salts depends on the nature of both cation and anion. As the molecular weight of either cation or anion— or both—increases, salts are likely to taste bitter. The lead and beryllium salts of acetic acid have a sweet taste. The taste of a number of salts is presented in Table 7-4. 

Follow this procedure Take a tiny pinch of each powdered or crystalline chemical and taste it. (See page 27 for procedure on tasting chemicals.) Then put teaspoonful of sodium chloride in the first test tube, teaspoonful of magnesium sulfate in the second test tube, and so on until you have teaspoonful of one powdered or crystalline chemical in each of the first 7 test tubes. Then put 1 teaspoonful of alcohol into the eighth test tube. Now add 1 tablespoonful of water to the contents of each test tube. Taste a speck of the alcohol and water. Write in the data for the first three entries of a data sheet, drawn up like this ... 

Follow this procedure Let the glasses of water stand until the water appears to be perfectly still and motionless. Drop the crystal of potassium permanganate into one, the crystal of salt in the next, and a drop of India ink into the third. Do not stir, touch or move the water in the glasses. Watch them for several minutes and notice what happens. Allow them to stand overnight, and then check the appearance of the three solutions. Using a glass rod, taste a drop of the sodium chloride solution in the second glass. 

Salt makes our foods taste better, and most of us living in Western civilizations consume too much of it. No question about that. We d get all the sodium we need from just one daily teaspoon of salt, sodium chloride. But we like to put it into the water before boiling potatoes or making pasta, and we sprinkle on more when we sit down to eat. In addition, 75 percent of the sodium in our diets comes from processed foods that contain not only sodium chloride but also a whole family of sodium compounds to make those foods taste good and make them last longer on supermarket shelves and in our pantries, bread boxes, and refrigerators. 

This result is true only of salts which are called normal salts (see below). It is also characteristic of bodies which are, chemically speaking, not salts, such as water. Substances, whether salts or not, which act toward litmus like common salt, are said to be neutral or to have a neutral reaction, A salty or saline taste is characteristic of most salts, and this property doubtless led to their classification with sodium chloride as a type, since this compound has been known for ages. Some compounds which are salts as far as their chemical relations are concerned do not have a neutral reaction. Thus sodium carbonate, which is the sodium salt of carbonic acid, is one of the most marked alkalies, being, in fact, known in commerce simply as alkali. ... 

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