Sodium Aspartate as a Specific Enhancer of Salty Taste Perception—Sodium Aspartate Is a Possible Candidate to Decrease Excessive Intake of Dietary Salt

Chem. Senses 39: 781–786, 2014 doi:10.1093/chemse/bju051 Advance Access publication October 11, 2014 Sodium Aspartate as a Specific Enhancer of Salty Taste Perception— Sodium Aspartate Is a Possible Candidate to Decrease Excessive Intake of Dietary Salt Tomohiro Nakagawa1, Jun Kohori1, Shin Koike1, Yoshihisa Katsuragi1 and Takayuki Shoji2 1 Health Care Food Research Laboratories, Kao Corporation, Sumida-ku, Tokyo 131-8501, 2 Japan and Department of Marine Biology, Tokai University, Shizuoka-shi, Shizuoka, Japan Correspondence to be sent to: Tomohiro Nakagawa, Health Care Food Research Laboratories, Kao Corporation, Sumida-ku, Tokyo 131-8501, Japan. e-mail: Accepted August 18, 2014 The excessive intake of dietary salt is a global issue in health. Attempts have been made to address this issue, including the development of salt substitutes. Yet, none of these substances are currently in wide use, because of their weak saltiness. The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of sodium aspartate (Asp-Na) on salty taste perception using the bullfrog glossopharyngeal nerve response and human sensory tests. When added to the mixture of NaCl and KCl, Asp-Na significantly enhanced the glossopharyngeal nerve response to the mixture by 1.6-fold compared to control. Asp-Na did not enhance the response to NaCl, nor did Asp-Na enhance the response to sour, bitter, or umami stimuli. The optimal concentration for Asp-Na to enhance the salt mixture was 1.7 mM. The largest enhancement was induced when NaCl and KCl were mixed at equimolar concentrations. Asp-Na significantly suppressed the glossopharyngeal nerve response to quinine hydrochloride, which suggests that bitterness of KCl is suppressed by Asp-Na. The salty taste enhancing effect of Asp-Na was also confirmed with human sensory tests. The present results suggested that the mixture of NaCl and KCl containing Asp-Na can be used as a salt substitute. In addition to demonstrating that Asp-Na enhanced salt taste responses in an experimental animal and human, our findings provide clues to identify the elusive salty taste receptors. Key words: nerve response, potassium chloride, reducing salt intake, salt substitute, salt taste receptor, salty taste enhancing substance Introduction In many countries the amount of dietary salt intake currently exceed 6.0 g/day, which is a standard set forth by the World Health Organization (WHO) (Elliott and Brown 2007). For example, dietary salt intake in Japan, China, the United States, and the United Kingdom are 12.3, 14.3, 10.7, and 9.4 g/day, respectively. Such salt intake higher than the standard may poses a serious problem in health, as recent meta-analyses have shown that excessive dietary salt intake will lead to hypertension, stroke, and gastric cancer (Intersalt Cooperative Research Group 1988; He and MacGregor 2009; Strazzullo et al. 2009). If left unchecked, this could trigger a global health crisis. To address this growing concern, many countries have focused their efforts on developing strategies to reduce salt intake (Henney et al. 2010). Food intake can be reduced a number of ways, including the use of substitute products and/or augmenting taste. © Crown copyright 2014 For instance, sugar intake can be controlled using the sugar substitutes aspartame or acesulfame-K, which are 200-fold sweeter than sugar. One can also add small amounts of salt to sugar to enhance sweetness (Kumazawa and Kurihara 1990), a widely used cooking trick, thereby reducing sugar intake. Salt substitutes have not been as successful. In fact, while various candidate salt substitutes or replacements exist, none have really caught on. For example, potassium chloride (KCl), while a promising candidate, has a weaker salty taste than sodium chloride (NaCl). When used in large amounts, it is also associated with bitterness, which is one of the reasons why its use has not been widely pur sued. Other substitutes such as ammonium chloride, potassium sulfate, and sodium gluconate have also been suggested as candidate substances, but because they share the same problems with KCl, their use has been limited. Moreover, the lack of Abstract 782 T. Nakagawa et al. Materials and methods Test animals American bullfrogs (Lithobathes catesbeianus) (250–350 g) purchased from a biological supply company(Ouchi Kazuo Animals for Teaching Materials, Saitama, Japan) were used for animal experiments. Ten bullfrogs were kept alive in a plastic water tank holding a small amount of water at temperature of 25°C. All experiments were conducted with the approval of the Animal Experimental Committee of Tokai University. arginine, NaCl, KCl, quinine hydrochloride (Q-HCl), and acetic acid were purchased from Wako Pure Chemical Industries (Osaka, Japan). Sodium glutamate, quinine hydrochloride, and acetic acid were used for umami taste, bitter taste, and sour taste respectively. All chemicals were dissolved in distilled water to make test solutions. Test solution The NaCl/KCl mixture is a mixture of sodium chloride and potassium chloride. The NaCl/KCl/Asp-Na mixture was made by adding Asp-Na to the NaCl/KCl mixture such that the sodium concentration remained equal to that of the NaCl/KCl mixture before Asp-Na addition. For example, to make a NaCl/KCl/Asp-Na mixture with 1.7 mM Asp-Na, 48.3 mM NaCl and 50 mM KCl is mixed with 1.7 mM Asp-Na. Measurement of bullfrog glossopharyngeal nerve response Bullfrogs were anesthetized with an intraperitoneal injection of urethane (350 mg/100 g body weight). Bullfrog with the tongue pulled out was fixed in a supine position. The skin on the lower jaw was removed with scissors to expose the glossopharyngeal nerve. The glossopharyngeal nerve bundle was dissected along the lingual artery with a pair of fine forceps, and the bundle was cut with fine scissors. The glossopharyngeal nerve response was measured as previously described by Katsuragi et al. (1997). Briefly, the nerve was contacted with a silver–silver chloride electrode and immersed in a mixture of liquid paraffin and vaseline. The neural activities of stimulus-induced taste response were amplified, band-passed (300–3000 Hz), and processed with an integrator (time constant: 0.3 s). Integrated responses consisted of an initial large phasic component followed by a tonic component. In this study, the height of tonic responses induced after 5 s of stimulation were used to represent the magnitude of the glossopharyngeal nerve responses. To assess the effects of amino acid coexisting with various salt mixture on the glossopharyngeal nerve response to the salt mixture, the bullfrog tongue was adapted to an amino acid solution until the nerve response declined to the spontaneous activity. Then, we applied a salt mixture solution containing the amino acid solution, which was used for adaptation. The solution for adaptation and stimulation was applied at a flow rate of 2.0 mL/s for 10 s. After stimulation, the tongue was washed with Ringer’s (...truncated)