Kokumi ‘rich taste’ sensation can enhance flavor complexity of otherwise bland foods

As humans, our tongues can recognize five basic tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami. Another taste, kokumi, enhances the flavor of food without being a basic taste. Kokumi has drawn increased attention in food flavor sciences for its ability to expand the flavor complexity of the foods we eat.

Kokumi is a Japanese word that means “rich taste.” Kokumi is elicited by kokumi substances, which are often γ-glutamyl peptides, or small amino acid chains with a unique peptide bond involving the gamma-carboxyl group of the amino acid glutamate. This gamma-carboxyl group turns regular glutamate into a special calcium-binding structure, which may play a role in receptor interactions on the tongue that elicit the kokumi taste sensation.

 

The global food technology sector is competitive, and research scientists spend countless hours finding ways to improve the flavor profiles of foods. In particular, the recent demand for healthier foods with lower fat and sodium and higher protein content can make development challenging, as many of these products are inherently bland. Many researchers see kokumi as a potential way to improve the overall flavor of otherwise plain-tasting food products.

 

Realizing the potential of kokumi in the global food industry, a team of scientists from Yunnan Agricultural University and Ningxia University summarized the current research progress, mechanistic debates, limitations of the current flavoring mechanism and future directions for kokumi study in a review paper. The paper was designed to spur further investigation into kokumi peptides and their use in food products and flavor enhancers.

 

The team published their paper, “Research advances in kokumi peptides: a comprehensive review from flavor mechanisms to food industry applications,” on April 28 in Food Science of Animal Products, published by Tsinghua University Press.

 

“In-depth research on kokumi peptides not only helps to uncover the molecular basis of food flavor formation, but also provides essential technical support for the development of new healthy foods that are low in salt, low in fat, and rich in flavor,” said Guiying Wang, professor in the College of Food Science and Technology at Yunnan Agricultural University in Kunming, China and senior author of the review paper. “Kokumi peptides have garnered considerable interest due to its dual functionality: it not only amplifies umami synergistic effects, but also effectively suppresses unpleasant flavors.”

 

The kokumi sensation works outside of the normal sweet, salty, sour, umami and bitter taste pathways as a non-classical taste signal. Researchers have established that the γ-glutamyl peptides associated with the kokumi taste work through proteins such as calcium-sensing receptors (CaSR) and G protein-coupled receptor class C group 6 member A (GPRC6A)—proteins that were not associated with taste sensations prior to kokumi research. Additional research established how specific γ-glutamyl peptides bind to CaSR and potential neural pathways that may be responsible for the taste of kokumi, enhancing the perception of both umami and saltiness. Together, these studies established a structure-activity-perception model for kokumi taste.

 

With this increased understanding of kokumi activity, scientists developed a kokumi peptide sequence library and structure-activity relationship map that provides researchers a summary of how different amino acid sequences bind and activate different receptors associated with the taste. This information has also been used to train machine learning algorithms to predict new kokumi peptides for potential development.

 

One of the major hurdles for kokumi peptide development is the lack of sensory standardization. “The inconsistent sensory groups and scoring scales used by different research teams, as well as the inconsistent standard substances or their corresponding concentrations selected, make it difficult to make horizontal comparisons of the results,” said Wang. Industrialization is also a challenge, as natural peptide extraction costs are high, yields are low, and synthesis is either complex or has yet to be scaled.

 

Despite these challenges, the research team sees great promise in kokumi peptides and their flavor-enhancing capabilities. “In the future, efforts should be made to further enhance the connection between basic research and industrial demands, smooth out the entire chain from discovery to mechanism, preparation and application, and promote independent innovation and development in the field of functional flavor substances,” said Xing.

 

Chunfang Yang, Shuai Tang, Jiayan Tan, Jiao Li, Kesi Yang, Chunying Weng, Huiwen Dong and Yanfei Du from the College of Food Science and Technology and the Livestock Product Processing and Engineering Technology Research Center of Yunnan Province at Yunnan Agricultural University in Kunming, China; Yuan Liu from the School of Food Science and Engineering at Ningxia University in Yinchuan, China; Hongbin Pan from the College of Animal Science and Technology at Yunnan Agricultural University in Kunming, China; and Guozhou Liao from the Livestock Product Processing and Engineering Technology Research Center of Yunnan Province at Yunnan Agricultural University also contributed to this research.

 

This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program Project for the 14th Five Year Plan (2022YFD1601905) and Yunnan Young and Middle-aged Academic and Technical Leader Reserve Talent Project (202105AC160068).

 

DOI Link:

https://doi.org/10.26599/FSAP.2026.9240159

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