A Novel Food-Derived Particle Enhances Sweet and Salty Taste Responses in Mice

Reducing the dietary intake of sugar and salt is considered a key strategy for preventing the onset and progression of lifestyle-related diseases. However, these dietary interventions often compromise the taste of foods, which can reduce patient satisfaction. To address this challenge, we focused on novel food-derived particles (NFPs; patent number P7383867) consisting of lipid, α-cyclodextrin, and xanthan gum formulated as an emulsion with excellent retention and diffusion properties.

Here, we investigated the effects of NFPs on the taste responses of mice.

In two-bottle preference tests (n = 4-6), NFPs enhanced preferences for sweet and salty stimuli in behavioral tests (one-way ANOVA, p < 0.05) and increased the responses of the chorda tympani nerve (n = 6-8) to sweet and salty stimuli (two-way ANOVA, main treatment effect p < 0.05), but had no effect on the responses to sour, bitter, or umami stimuli.

These findings suggest that NFPs may enhance peripheral taste responses to sweet and salty flavors, thereby helping maintain the palatability of foods with reduced sugar or salt content. Such modulation may have broad applications in improving the acceptability of therapeutic or restricted diets and supporting both disease management and prevention, including lifestyle-related diseases, kidney disease, and other conditions requiring dietary restriction and may offer translational relevance for human dietary interventions.