Sinoright Blog
L-Alanine Applications
Glycine has a sweet taste, can reconcile sour and salty taste, basically eliminating the bitter taste of saccharin added to food, but the amount of glycine is limited, the provisions of the seasonings and beverages added to products limited to ≤ 0.1%, as a non-essential amino acids, excessive intake of the human body is not easy to be absorbed and utilised, but will destroy the body's amino acid absorption and metabolism balance, resulting in nutritional disorders and damage to health.
Chilli oil resin has a strong pungent taste and a hot feeling, which can increase the spicy taste of food, and cannot be used to harmonise the taste of food.
The remaining flavour enhancers, with the exception of L-alanine, are all sodium salts, and when used in large quantities, they are contrary to the "low-sodium" life advocated at present, whereas L-alanine is a stable amino acid monomer, which can be added directly in the form of monomers in flavouring products. Therefore, the unique advantages of L-alanine as a flavour enhancer are gradually being highlighted.
Advantages of L-alanine in food application
L-alanine is a kind of amino acid with special fresh taste and sweetness, which can improve the nutritional value and flavour of food, and has been widely used in all kinds of food and compound seasonings.L-alanine has natural advantages compared with other flavour enhancers:
L-alanine has natural advantages compared with other flavour enhancers, such as:
- Does not contain sodium ions, in line with the "low-sodium" concept of healthy living, will not be excessive intake of the human body will not bring harm, induced by high blood pressure and atherosclerosis and other diseases;
- Can be added as needed, the national standard strictly stipulates the use of glycine and other flavour enhancers dose, other flavour enhancers used in excess may disturb the metabolic balance of the body, Ran alanine can be added as needed;
- It can improve the quality of food and stimulate the flavour of the ingredients themselves.
Characteristics of L-alanine flavour enhancers
Obvious Flavour Presentation
L-alanine's flavour presentation is mainly freshness and sweetness, both of which are stronger compared to sweetness. When used in food, compared to the effect of increasing the sweetness of food, it gives food freshness while moderating the flavour of the food and stimulating the flavour of the ingredient itself. In addition, L-alanine can also harmonise the salty and sour taste of food, moderate spicy, bitter and astringent tastes, and has a good effect on keeping the overall taste of food soft.
Enhancement of fresh flavour
L-alanine was first used in synthetic wine to increase the strong aroma and sweetness of wine, and when L-alanine is used in combination with other flavourings, it can present a higher level of taste, and at the same time it can mask the astringency of the other flavourings, making the ingredients more delicious. For example, increasing the concentration of L-alanine in yeast extract can significantly reduce the astringency, make it more aromatic, and even bring out the flavour originally hidden in the yeast extract.
Moderation of savoury and sour flavours
L-alanine has the characteristic of moderating the salty taste, which can reduce the bad salty taste of the pickled product itself and bring out the fresh taste of the food while adjusting the salty taste to produce more delicious food.L-alanine has the characteristic of neutralising the acid factor and moderating the sour taste of the food when there is not much change in the pH value of the vinegar, citric acid, etc. This is the elimination of the acidic taste through the moderating effect of L-alanine, which is generally called the "moderating acidity effect."
Action on sweet substances
L-alanine is an amino acid with strong sweetness, and the sweetness is 1.2 times that of sucrose. L-alanine and sweet substances also react with each other, and in pastries such as bean paste cake, L-alanine can confer a strong sweetness to these foods, making them soft, sweet and refreshing, in addition, L-alanine can enhance the flavouring effect of chemical flavouring materials, moderate the undesirable after-taste of artificial sweeteners, and can effectively improve the bitter and astringent tastes of high-frequency It can effectively improve the bitter and astringent flavour of high-flavor sweeteners.
Improve flavour longevity
With increased health concerns, society is also promoting lighter diets. Adding L-alanine to these light-flavoured foods improves flavour persistence so that the food will not be as bland and tasteless as water, making it a tasty food accompanied by a ripe flavour. A critical value of 0.06% alanine provides a longer lasting flavour compared to 0.5% sugar and 0.2% salt.
Mildens unpleasant flavours in food
L-Alanine has the effect of eliminating bad odours. Adding 0.2%-1% alanine to soya milk or vegetable juice can significantly reduce the unpleasant taste and make the taste better and more acceptable.
In addition, L-alanine can prevent the aging of foaming wine, reduce the odour of yeast, and mellow the flavour of foaming and fermented wine; it can effectively moderate the astringent and astringent flavour of chitosan, tannin, catechin, etc., as well as the irritating flavour of alkaline peculiarities such as sodium carbonate of hydroxylin and calcium shell. In addition, it can also reduce the bitterness of citrus beverages such as grapefruit juice and orange juice, as well as the bitterness of divergent amino acids such as L-valine and L-isoleucine.
Other effects
Alanine also has a chelating effect (metal-blocking effect). It softens foods such as kelp and jam moderately, and by this action, it makes otherwise hard kelp easy to eat, keeps jam-like foods from hardening even after long-term preservation, and makes bread simple to stretch. In addition, adding an aqueous solution of alanine to mozuku not only improves the freshness of the flavour, but also keeps the mozuku fresh and green when preserved.
L-Alanine in some commercially available products
L-alanine is widely used in seasonings to make them richer and more flavourful. L-alanine can also enhance the nutritional value and safety of seasonings, which can satisfy the public's consumption concept.
Applications in flavourings
Soy sauce
The addition of appropriate amount of L-alanine has a good effect on improving the flavour of both processed soy sauce and crude oil, which can reduce the salinity of soy sauce, increase the sweetness, increase the persistence of flavour, and make the overall taste softer, especially on the flavouring of soy sauce crude oil with high salinity and without additives such as monosodium L-glutamate, I+G, and yeast extract, etc. The flavouring effect is the most obvious.
Edible salt
As consumers' concept of light flavour continues to deepen, low-sodium diet will become a healthy way of eating. The low-sodium salt introduced abroad, with the main ingredients of 60%-70% sodium chloride and 20%-30% potassium chloride, and about 10% L-alanine, yeast extract and I+G, can achieve salt reduction but not salty, help the body's sodium-potassium balance, increase freshness, and in particular reduce the use of monosodium glutamate (MSG), which plays a positive role in both preventing and reducing high blood pressure.
Chicken essence
In order to enhance the flavour of chicken essence, in addition to increasing the amount of chicken powder added, some manufacturers prefer to add L-alanine in their chicken essence formula, using the freshness of L-alanine as well as the role of inducing the flavour of food to enhance the taste of chicken essence seasoning, which not only plays a coordinated role in increasing freshness, but also reduces the intake of sodium in the human body. The addition of L-alanine to chicken essence resulted in a mellower chicken flavour and enhanced freshness, indicating that L-alanine helps to enhance the flavour presentation of chicken essence.
Seasoning Sauce
L-alanine can significantly enhance the freshness of sauces, enhance the fullness of flavour, and alleviate the sour, astringent, bitter and other undesirable odours of the fermented raw materials in sauces.
Hotpot base
Studies have shown that 0.3%-1% L-alanine can enhance the freshness and durability of hot pot soup base; it can harmonise the flavour and texture of hot pot soup base, making the salty, numbing, spicy, freshness and aroma of the hot pot soup base more integrated and full of flavour.
Cured products
Research shows that: the colour, aroma and taste of pickled products mostly come from a variety of flavour-presenting amino acids such as L-alanine, and the richer the amino acid content, the stronger the freshness, sweetness and aroma. Adding L-alanine at 0.2%-0.3% to pickled vegetables, pickled radish, pickled meat, rice bran and other pickled foods can play the role of aroma and flavour, and can also buffer the taste of pickled foods with high salt.
Effect on refreshing drinks
L-alanine is an amphoteric electrolyte that is alkaline in a strong acidic environment and acidic in a strong alkaline environment, so L-alanine can supplement the amino acid content of beverages, and at the same time, it can also use its alkaline as well as sweetness to reduce the acidity and harmonise the flavour of beverages. When L-alanine is added to strong acidic beverages such as orange juice, grapefruit juice, and black sour drinks, alanine can neutralise the acidity and increase its sweetness and aroma, turning them into tasty drinks.
Role in wine
The earlier application of alanine as a flavour enhancer is to add it to synthetic wine to increase the strong aroma and sweetness of synthetic wine.L-alanine can increase the sweetness of wine and make the taste of wine more mellow, and it can also prevent the browning of amino acid in beer and foaming wine, and reduce the smell of yeast.
It is not difficult to find that L-alanine is already available in certain brands of products on the market.L-alanine is a healthcare-type flavour enhancer with unique flavour that can strengthen nutrition, and at the same time, alanine is one of the non-essential amino acids that make up the human body's proteins, which is of important application value and has great potential for development.
