Off-Tastes in Healthier Products: Challenges and Solutions

Across Asia Pacific, the shift toward healthier food and beverage options is accelerating. Yet one challenge continues to surface in product development: how to deliver nutritional benefits while maintaining great taste.

Taste carries weight, especially in Southeast Asian markets. It shapes preference, drives repeat purchase, and ultimately determines whether a product succeeds. Even the most nutritionally advanced product can fall short if the sensory experience does not meet expectations.

Healthier choices should still be enjoyable. For many developers, achieving that balance remains a complex task.

The Taste Challenge Behind Healthier Formulations

Better-For-You Products
Low and no-sugar products are now firmly established across the region. Over the past decade, launches in APAC have grown by around 200%, fueled by rising health awareness and regulatory pressures like the tax on sugar-sweetened beverages (Mintel).

However, reducing sugar introduces a separate set of challenges. High-intensity sweeteners such as stevia and monk fruit can leave lingering sweetness, bitterness, or licorice notes when used at higher levels.

Synthetic options like sucralose or aspartame, often paired with acesulfame K, help create a more rounded sweetness profile but may also bring metallic notes, dryness, or an artificial aftertaste, particularly in carbonated beverages.

Fortification Brings Functional Benefits and Off-Notes
Functional ingredients continue to reshape innovation. Protein, collagen, vitamins, and adaptogens are transforming beverages into daily nutrition solutions, with high or added-protein claims growing by around 35% between 2023 and 2025 in APAC (Mintel).

At the same time, these ingredients introduce sensory hurdles. Proteins can create chalky or powdery textures. Vitamins and minerals may contribute bitterness or metallic notes. Marine collagen, despite its functional benefits, often carries a distinct fishy taste and aroma.

Plant-Based Proteins and Palatability Gaps
Interest in plant-based diets continues to grow, but taste remains a barrier. The 2024 EAT-GlobeScan report found that 68% of consumers globally want to eat more plant-based foods, yet 35% cite poor taste as a reason for holding back.

Plant-based proteins such as soy, pea, and lentil often contribute beany, green, bitter, or astringent notes. These off-flavors can limit repeat purchase, even when the product meets nutritional expectations.

Turning Challenges into Opportunities
PureMask™ is Sensient’s targeted masking solution, designed to reduce the perception of undesirable off-notes such as bitterness, astringency, chalkiness, sourness, metallic tones, and more while preserving the intended flavor profile of the product.

“As a natural flavor, PureMask™ supports clean label positioning and can be easily integrated into existing formulations”, says Nick Parker, Innovations Manager at Sensient Asia Pacific. “Its range of masking solutions is designed to target specific off-notes, giving developers greater precision when working across different applications.”

Key features include:

• Effective masking of common off-notes in better-for-you products
• Maintains desired taste and aroma profiles
• Low cost-in-use with flexible dosage
• Available in liquid and dry formats, including organic options
• Non-GMO, Halal, and Kosher options

Proven Impact in Real Applications
PureMask™ can be successfully applied across a wide range of categories, including beverages, dairy and plant-based products, baked goods, frozen desserts, and sauces.

“We’re seeing a rapid rise in fortified beverages across China, Indonesia, Japan, and Thailand,” says Allen Tham, Technical Services Senior Manager and Beverage Specialist at Sensient Asia Pacific.

“In our sensory evaluations, adding PureMask™ to a commercially available soymilk reduced the undesirable rancid, beany, and grainy notes, while enhancing milky fresh flavor and overall palatability.”