Unlocking the Potential of the Umami Taste-Presenting Compounds: A Review of the Health Benefits, Metabolic Mechanisms and Intelligent Detection Strategies

Abstract

ABSTRACT Umami is essential in food which has garnered attention due to its potential benefits, mainly produced by umami amino acids, nucleotides and peptides. Expanding the mechanism analysis and compiling the available detection information of umami compounds facilitate advance this area. This review initially extracted research focus areas of umami by bibliometric analysis. Then, the specific role of umami contributors in preventing and treating metabolic diseases were introduced. Umami compounds exhibit outstanding performance in various health benefits, including antihypertensive, gut health promotion, enhanced appetite and suppression of obesity, and so on, marking their new perspectives in bioactivity development. Emphasis was placed on elucidating the presentation mechanisms with core metabolism pathways contributing to the umami tastes. The potential umami presentation mechanism and metabolism pathways for key umami compounds were then proposed based on their structural properties. Additionally, current developments in the intelligent detection of umami compounds were reviewed. Intelligent sensors based on umami receptors combined with multivariate statistics provide a more accessible and more intuitive strategy for distinguishing and predicting umami compounds and providing recommendations for further advancements. This review could deepen the understanding of controlling umami taste in food matrices and foster the development of the related industry.