Daily Harvest manufactures a line of frozen foods ranging from smoothies to pastas to “harvest bowls,” all of which feature totally clean-label ingredient panels. In the crowded frozen food category, a clean label is a plus, but it won’t compensate for a lack of flavor. So the chefs who create Daily Harvest products work to incorporate flavor enhancers that pump up the taste without risking the integrity of the ingredient panel.
“One of our main goals is making it easier for people to eat more organic fruits and vegetables, and that lends itself well to experimenting with flavor,” says Christina Gutiérrez-Williams, senior director of culinary R&D at Daily Harvest.
The products at Daily Harvest are on the low end of the complexity scale – they incorporate natural flavor enhancers that are easily recognizable by consumers. But there are many modified – yet still naturally derived – flavor enhancers and flavor boosting systems on the market that qualify as clean label.
“Consumers today are highly motivated by authenticity in their food choices – whether it’s flavors, ingredients or even production elements like organic farming and sustainability efforts,” notes Austin Luft, senior flavor chemist at T. Hasegawa USA. “For consumers, there is a halo around the use of natural colors and ingredients as part of a healthy lifestyle, and brands are increasingly developing products that rely on natural ingredients to meet this demand.”
Basic flavors
Enhancing flavors with natural ingredients is an ancient practice. What Daily Harvest does differently is incorporate basic ingredients – mushrooms, fruits, herbs – in forms that work well in processed food.
For example, they use powdered, freeze-dried tomato as a flavor booster in their frozen chili product. It helps create a “slow-cooked experience,” Gutiérrez-Williams says.
“The broth base of the chili has typical chili ingredients like chili powder and cumin and garlic and onion. But then this tomato powder really amplifies the taste of the tomato. It's more of a punchy flavor,” she explains. “Using the tomato powder rounds out the flavors of the spices and really drives homes that chili taste.”
Porcini mushroom powder is another flavor booster Daily Harvest uses. Gutiérrez-Williams explains that the it does not necessarily add a mushroomy flavor – rather, it enhances the umami flavor of a dish.
The powder is found in the company’s Primavera pasta dish, where it’s mixed into a dairy-free vegan sauce made with cauliflower puree.
“Cauliflower on its own obviously doesn't taste like a creamy rich alfredo sauce,” Gutiérrez-Williams says. “So in addition to using nutritional yeast and garlic and salt and those things to give it savoriness, we also found that adding a small amount of porcini powder brings it all together. It makes the sauce feel cohesive and decadent in a way that the cauliflower puree on its own probably wouldn't.”
Addressing variability
A characteristic of basic natural flavor boosters is variability. Timing, geography, production processes and many other variables affect the taste and nutrient content of natural food. In some cases that lack of consistency may be seen as a positive attribute – a skilled chef can adapt a recipe to take advantage of variability to create new flavors, for example – but for commercially processed food, variability is a serious challenge.
Daily Harvest addresses this issue by creating tasting notes for its manufacturing partners. The recipe may call for a certain quantity of porcini or tomato powder, for example, but the tasting notes will explain what the finished product is supposed to look like and how it is supposed to taste.
That way if a variable ingredient is slightly different from the one used when the recipe was developed, adjustments may be made to bring the product up to specification. The people in charge of production are expected to taste the goods as they are being made and when they are finished.
“It’s almost leaning more toward art versus the science when you're working with natural ingredients because of the natural variability and the reliance on tasting,” Gutiérrez-Williams says. “The process isn’t quite as quantitative as, for example, adding two drops of XYZ additive.”
Sometimes the company uses one natural additive to balance out the variability in another. For example, Daily Harvest Strawberry + Goji Berry Oat Bowl includes pieces of whole strawberries. That fruit is especially variable – some are juicy and sweet, others are crisp and tart.
The company does not want to add refined sugar to address the strawberry variability, so instead they add a sauce that includes powdered haskap berry – a fruit that resembles elongated blueberries and has sweet, juicy berry flavor.
“We have found that it really heightens the taste of the strawberry,” Gutiérrez-Williams says. “So it’s OK if our strawberries don’t taste perfectly sweet in a certain batch.”
Slightly more complex
Many food processors that want a clean label prefer ingredients that are bit more consistent than what Daily Harvest uses. Examples of clean-label flavor boosters that are slightly more processed include Sante and Clear Tomato Concentrate (CTC) from Lycored.
These ingredients begin with red tomatoes that are skinned, crushed, pulped, deaerated, heated and cooled. A centrifuge then separates the pulp and liquid serum, which then becomes Sante or CTC.
Sante is used by food processors to add umami and kokumi – a sensation of mouthfulness and heartiness -- with lower acidity, and CTC adds a sweet tomato acidity with a smooth balancing effect, explains Jennifer Elegbede, global applications manager for Lycored.
“Sante decreases the need for and can act as an alternative to salt, added sugars, MSG, yeast and more – allowing up to 65% reduction of sodium in some applications,” Elegbede says. “Sante simultaneously enhances sweetness in formulations due to the taste-neutral aspect it provides and works synergistically with other sweetness enhancing ingredients.”
Sante is found in glazes, marinades, condiments, dips, dressings, soups, pizza crust, plant-based meats and other processed foods. CTC is commonly used in tomato-based food products, such as tomato sauces and condiments.
Yeast extract is another example of a flavor enhancer that falls into the “slightly more complex” category. Yeast extract is derived from regular yeast and contains a wide range of amino acids, minerals and other nutrients.
As a flavor enhancer, yeast extract adds umami and savory notes. It is commonly found in soups, seasonings, snacks and other processed foods. Ajinomoto Health & Nutrition offers a portfolio of yeast-based flavor enhancers.
“Our integrated solutions help solve formulation challenges for delicious, healthful products including clean-label flavor enhancers/boosters,” says Tia Rains, vice president of science, innovation and corporate affairs for Ajinomoto. “Our team works closely with manufacturers to ensure our sodium and sugar reduction solutions can be incorporated into a variety of products and recipes, maximizing the end-consumer eating experience while meeting nutrition targets.”
Another example of a flavor enhancer in this category is allium oil, derived from garlic or onion.
“Alliums often act as a cornerstone in culinary flavor cliques such as sofrito, mirepoix and Cantonese aromatics,” according to the website of Kalsec, which supplies this ingredient. “Onions are a building block when cooking in any area of the world and garlic can be added generously as the signature of a dish or used as an accent in a more complex flavor profile.”
Natural flavor systems
Clean-label flavor boosters only work well when properly applied, of course. That’s where natural flavor-enhancing systems come into play – they help ensure that the taste matches the expectation in a clean-label food product.
“Flavor science has evolved and progressed to the point where technological advancements can now offer ‘no-compromise’ solutions for clean-label product development,” notes Luft of T. Hasegawa USA. “Consumer expectations continue to grow for ‘better-for-you’ products with reduced calories, fat, sodium, sugar or alternative products such as dairy-free or plant-based proteins – but the most successful products are uncompromising on flavor and taste experience. This challenge is met by flavor science that delivers the clean label BFY attributes that consumers want, with formulations that still taste great.”
T. Hasegawa’s Boostract is an example of a flavor enhancer that amplifies other natural flavors and improves the mouthfeel and richness of the flavor, Luft explains. Boostract, which comes in a variety of formulations, is based on kokumi. It can be labeled as a “natural flavor.”
Another T. Hasegawa product in this space is Hasearoma, which isolates and amplifies specific flavor molecules in foods and beverages.
“These are all natural technologies and processes, allowing us to offer clean-label solutions to the challenges facing food manufacturers, with zero compromise to the final flavor profile,” Luft says.
Sensient Flavors & Extracts also has a line of flavor boosters and enhancers that help natural food products reach their potential. The TrueBoost line from Sensient includes Sweetness, SensaSalt, Mouthfeel and Amplify. All of them can be labeled as “natural flavors.”
As their names imply, each handles a different area. SensaSalt boosts salt flavor to allow for reduced salt in the product formulation – a recent application allowed a salt reduction of 40% in a red pasta sauce. Mouthfeel is useful to improve the enjoyment of dairy products and to reduce the oily feel in salad dressings.
“Our sweetness enhancer is especially helpful in products with very low or no sugar content,” says Meg Jurcan, innovation scientist and project manager for Sensient. “When manufacturers use a high-intensity sweetener, it can create a peaky sweetness where consumers enjoy a very sweet taste that quickly disappears — peaking and dissipating. Our sweetness enhancer smooths out the spike-and-dip at the tail end, and it can also recreate a more typical mouthfeel that comes with sugar.”
The company’s newest flavor enhancer, Amplify, helps in a broad variety of processed foods. “Amplify boosts positive flavor characteristics in almost any application,” Jurcan says. “For example, we recently included our flavor enhancer in a BBQ sauce to boost the nutmeg and smoky undertones to simply create a more complex flavor profile overall. In another application, Amplify took a good coffee drink and made it premium by boosting the natural sweetness of the creamer flavor while also boosting the roasted notes of the coffee.”
The appeal of a clean label will continue to grow, and the number of solutions – ranging from simple to complex – available to food processors will, too.
“The flavor industry is in a transformative time right now, offering breakthrough technologies that are specifically designed for natural/clean-label products,” Luft notes. “As consumer demands grow increasingly complex and the definition of ‘better-for-you’ continues to evolve, flavor science is a valuable tool for solving product development challenges and creating foods and beverages that always prioritize taste and the consumer experience.”
