K. Duerrschmid
University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences, BOKU Vienna, Department of Food Science and Technology, Division of Food Quality Assurance


Modulation of taste perceptions is a hot topic in new food product development and in finding strategies to influence consumers towards a health oriented eating behaviour. Manufacturers intend to develop food products without any negative sensory properties, which fulfil all sensory demands of consumers. Health enhancing vegetables e.g. are often refused by consumers because of their bitter or astringent taste. Accurate taste modulation techniques, which influence taste perception on the various stages of its formation chain, can be a valuable tool in this field. Taste perception can be modulated on the level of stimulus molecules, on the level of stimulus reception and formation of the sensory signal, on the level of signal transduction in the afferente nerve cells and on the level of signal processing in the brain.

Adenosine monophosphate (AMP) is a patented bitter blocker in the USA and possesses GRAS status for the use in several food products within a concentration of 200 to 800 ppm since 2004. To find out if AMP shows the claimed effect in food products of everyday life, sensory and consumer testings were performed with beer, green tea, grapefruit juice, caffeine solutions and coffee. Directional paired comparison tests were done by trained panellists in ten-fold repetition. Untrained consumers got one pair of samples and were asked to identify the sample with the higher bitterness. Whereas the consumers were not able to identify differences in bitter intensity between products and 800 ppm AMP added products, about 10% of the trained panellists found significant differences in bitter intensity in beer, caffeine solutions and coffee. Therefore the effect of AMP on bitter intensity perception could be confirmed in principle, but we could not find that consumers are able to perceive the effect of AMP. Our data imply that AMP can be used as a bitter reducer in some food products, but only a minority of persons seems to be able to perceive the effect of AMP.