R&D RADIO: Natural Flavors and Taste Modulation with Lauren Senne of Imbibe

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1:20What is flavor? It's like an ingredient in your food where you're trying to impart a certain taste or aroma. Its whole function is just to make something taste like something else. It's not to add nutrition or anything like that. So a lot of times when you talk about flavor, people are talking about characterizing flavor. So like, I want this water that tastes like nothing to not taste like strawberry. So that's like your classic example. Then when you start talking about taste modulation, a taste modulator is a type of flavor, first of all. So it is another type. It's non-characterizing. And the way it works is that it's interacting with your taste buds to change the signals that are going to your brain and making your brain think the product tastes different than it actually does without changing any of the ingredients.

2:08So a lot of times it's just like this nice tool that you can use to make something that doesn't taste that good, tastes a lot better just by using flavor. Hey everyone, this is Adam Yee, food scientist and podcast host of Startup CPG's R &D Radio, where we interview food scientists and product developers and what they do and how they can help you build your CPG business. Today, I'm interviewing Lauren Sene, a senior manager of applications and taste modulation and flavorists at Imbibe, drink consultancy company in Chicago, where she leads development of flavor systems that solve real formulation challenges from masking off notes to building complexity across beverage categories.

2:50With over a decade at Imbibe and more than 13 years in the flavor industry, Lauren brings deep bench-level expertise alongside the strategic perspective of someone who has already grown with the company from apprentice to senior leader. Lauren walks through the surprisingly rigorous path of becoming a certified flavorist and breaks down the real difference between a characterizing flavor and a taste modulation. This includes things like bitter blockers and improving sweetness. We then dig into how bitter blockers actually work on the receptor level, do some really interesting science-y stuff, and why something as simple as describing a cherry or vanilla can mean wildly different things to different clients.

3:29And what really happens to a product's mouthfeel and flavor balance when you take out sugar from a formula. We also get into why flavor houses guard their formulations as trade secrets and the clean label trends reshaping the beverage world right now, from protein and fiber combos to the rise of clear protein sodas. We know there's been a huge discussion about natural flavors and how we flavor things as food scientists in recent months. This interview brings a nice understanding and transparency about what this industry is like, between scientists to scientists. Whether or not you choose to use natural flavors in your products, I hope you can use this as a way to educate how we use them as food scientists and help founders make great products.

4:10Enjoy this episode, Lauren. I'm sure you'll learn a lot.

4:15Welcome back to R &D Radio. This is your host, Adam Yee. And today I have Lauren Sene on the show from InBike. Thank you. Happy to be here. So I've known you through some other podcasts that I've done, and I thought you had a great explanation on a lot of things in the drinks industry and how we flavor drinks. And so that's why I wanted you to be on this podcast, R &D Radio, to give like a lowdown just straight from the source, so to say, of what is a natural flavor and some of the really cool tricks you guys are doing with these tools that us food scientists use to improve food products. So Lauren, just tell me a little bit about yourself before we begin.

4:53Yeah, absolutely. So my name is Lauren Sonny. I am the senior manager of taste modulation and applications at Em5. I am also a certified flavor chemist. So I've been with this company for a little over 10 years, starting with making food flavors, what we call characterizing flavors, and we'll talk about what that means. And then over the last couple of years transitioned into leading this team that focuses more on pace modulation. So covering how do we make some of the undesirable things a little bit less obvious? How do we enhance things we do like about the product? Can definitely get into like what some of the key differences are as well.

5:35So how many products would you say you've worked on like in the past 10 years? Oh my gosh. Hundreds. Yeah, hundreds. Lots of different things. all across the board, all different types of flavors, pretty limited to like sweet rather than savory, but lots of different things. Yeah. Because InBive is a drink company, right? Exactly. You guys help formulate drinks. Most of our business is in beverage. We do some other non-beverage things, but beverage is definitely our specialty. Very cool. So you said you're a certified flavor chemist, right? Yes. What is that? Yeah. So there is a certification body They're called the Society of Flavor Chemists, and their goal is to really just provide standards and education in the industry.

6:23So they oversee this certification program to pretty much just ensure that all flavorists have a certain baseline understanding of the industry and how to formulate flavors. So what it looks like is you start as a trainee working under another certified flavorist. Like an apprentice? Yeah, exactly. that you're apprenticing, and you will do that for a minimum of five years. During that time, you're learning all of the different chemicals that are approved for use and flavor, where they occur naturally, how they're made, and what they smell and taste like. So after that five-year period, you are able to apply to take a certification exam.

7:05So you'll take a written exam, you'll do an interview, and then you will smell different chemicals and have to like identify them based on what they smell like, which is probably the most intimidating part. Interesting. What's an interview like for this type of test? The interview I thought was like the most approachable part. You sit with a panel of other flavorists who have already done this and they just ask you questions. Some of it is more like in-depth versions of the written exam questions where they might ask you for more information or to go into more detail. And then some of it is just like trying to understand your day-to-day process, understanding like how you approach formulating flavor and just getting into some of the details of your ways of working.

7:50So this is quite a rigorous process, right, to become a certified flavor chemist. It is. So I mentioned you do that test at five years. Then again, in two years, you're eligible for another test. That is your final test to become like a full certified flavorist. flavorist. So if you pass that, then you are done testing. You're eligible to mentor new flavorists going forward. So it does take an absolute minimum of seven years as an apprentice. But by the time you wait for your exams to get scheduled and stuff, it tends to take people about a decade realistically. That's crazy. In terms of the magnitude of things you have to test, right?

8:29You mentioned learning about the different compounds and learning about how safe these compounds are. I'd love to just give us a snapshot about like the things you have to know. Yeah. So, I mean, I mentioned like having to recognize them. I think that's the hardest part. So like leading up to my exam, I had hundreds of these little bottles of chemicals all over like my coffee table and my husband's quizzing me. I'm like, what does this one smell like? The purpose of that is so that when you encounter them in a food flavor or in a food, you recognize them and are able to pick them out and make adjustments.

9:04You also need to know a lot about how flavors are processed so that you can make intelligent formulations for different applications and choose things that are going to be heat stable and resistant to whatever shelf life needs you have, all of those types of things. Then you're going to learn a lot about like what chemicals naturally occur in different types of foods as well. So like what makes an orange flavor taste like an orange flavor, what things naturally occur in a watermelon so that when you're making up those concoctions in the lab, you have that foundational knowledge either to follow and make something that feels true to fruit or to embellish certain notes and make things that are a bit more candy-like or fantasy-inspired.

9:53Wow. So you can like smell any product and kind of pick up the notes and then you can figure out a few things about it, right? Yeah, definitely. I definitely notice if like there is a weird flavor in something I'm consuming where like one chemical is sticking out, that can be kind of distracting. But otherwise, it's fun to just like consume, see what other flavorists are coming up with because there really is no one way to make a certain profile. There's a lot of room for creativity. Everybody, each flavorist could try to go in the lab and make a strawberry and come out with something totally different than their peers.

10:27And I think that's something that's really cool about it. A lot of room to be creative, a lot of different materials you can choose. It is everyone's taste is so individual. So there's space for all of it. Yeah. So speaking of like creativity, you do get a lot of people with creative ideas, right? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I'd love to hear some examples of like some of the drinks that you've kind of been approached by and the complexities of talking to maybe a client to get to the right like point or getting the right flavor profile. I'd love to learn some of that. Yeah. You know, you got approached by all different types of customers, like some, maybe they have an R &D or technical background and they know really well, like this is technically possible.

11:09These are the claims I want to make. These are the ingredients I want to use. And here's how I describe everything in a way that like makes sense to you. And that's great. Love when that happens. That makes things really straightforward. But that like realistically doesn't happen that often or all the time. A lot of the customers come to like an R &D house like and buy because they want help from experts on formulating their products. So it is not uncommon at all to either get like a laundry list of like, here's all the ingredients I want to try and all the claims I want to make. And I want it to be natural and clean label and all of these things, and then have to sit with the customer and talk about some of the technical limitations and provide some suggested pass forward.

11:57It's also pretty common for a customer to come in and think they know exactly what they want. And when they really taste it in practice, or they see the price tag associated with it, then there's a pivot and you help walk them through that as well. Even getting aligned on like something as simple as like, I want this to taste like cherry can be really complicated because like I said, like everyone has a different standard. Maybe I'm talking about the cherry candy that I had when I was a kid that I loved. You're thinking about like a fresh picked cherry. So how do we share that vocabulary and like meet in the middle?

12:34Yeah. And that's more common than we think when it comes to almost any flavor right totally vanilla has several different types of like what bourbon vanilla french vanilla yeah you've got even just like vanilla extracts alone you've got your bourbon you've got indonesian you've got tahitian they're all different and then you add like the custardy vanilla the french vanilla like all those different types you think vanilla is like so simple we use it to be like you say something's vanilla it means it's boring but like there's a lot of nuances and it actually is really challenging to make a good vanilla flavor because it's subtle and there's like not that much room for off notes and things to hide yeah 100 and also strawberry right you can get like fresh picked strawberry you can get a more juicier strawberry and i've had a strawberry project where like i don't think the client was very unclear about like what strawberry wanted and something that was a i learned as a trick was like do you have a reference strawberry or do you have a reference product that you like that we can try to match it, right?

13:35Absolutely. Yeah, that is like probably my first line of defense. If we have a customer that really either they can't explain any of the nuances of the profile they want, or perhaps there's multiple people in the room and they're disagreeing on the type of profile, it's like, okay, go out. Either we'll recommend here's some products that are kind of diverse profiles, go taste them or we'll ask them each to get a reference that they think embodies what they're looking for. Everybody tastes it. We'll often suggest like a live tasting with them so we can hear how they're describing the profiles and get aligned with like the way that they talk about their flavor.

14:18And that often helps people make a decision actually tasting something versus just like abstractly describing something they want to taste. Yeah. If you want to go super advanced, there are even some exercises, right? Like I recall when I was in bigger companies, something called napping, right? Where you get like 10 different strawberry products, let's say, and you have an X and Y graph and then you put the products in certain quadrants and you have an expert, like a sensory expert, kind of tell you where your product might be good at, right? Yeah, definitely. And demand the client sentiment.

14:52Yeah, if you're looking to take like a more data-driven approach, that's a really excellent option. I haven't done that in a long time, but it just reminded me those are really fun to do. A lot of times it doesn't take like anything that extreme because usually as soon as people like react to something, they're like, I know I hate this one. I know I like this one. Make it like this, but change this one little thing and then you're good to go. Yeah, for sure. You also mentioned something called taste modulation in kind of your intro, right? Yeah, absolutely. We talked a little bit about it through prior kind of projects.

15:20I thought you had a really good explanation of what it is. And I think it's a really good tool for like founders and brand owners to understand. Totally. So I think it helps to talk about what is flavor, right? It's like an ingredient in your food where you're trying to impart a certain taste or aroma. Its whole function is just to make something taste like something else. It's not to add nutrition or anything like that. So a lot of times when you talk about flavor, people are talking about characterizing flavor, which is what we've been talking about the whole time. It's exactly what it sounds like.

15:52So like, I want this water that tastes like nothing to not taste like strawberry. So that's like your classic example. Then when you start talking about taste modulation, a taste modulator is a type of flavor, first of all. So it is another type. It's non-characterizing. And the way it works is that it's interacting with your taste buds to change the signals that are going to your brain and making your brain think the product tastes different than it actually does without changing any of the ingredients. So a lot of times it's just like this nice tool that you can use to make something that doesn't taste that good taste a lot better.

16:30Just by using flavor, it might be making something taste sweeter than it is, enhancing certain characteristics like that, like sweetness or saltiness or flavor. Or it might be diminishing, like off notes, masking, bitterness, for instance. Yes, a common term we use is bitter blockers. Can I have a bitter blocker? Yeah, totally. Bitter blocker is like the classic taste modulator. It actually works by binding to your bitter receptors on your tongue. So your brain is not even capable of perceiving that there's bitterness there. Your body can't perceive it because that bitter receptor is not available to interact with your product.

17:10So even though you've still got all these bitter ingredients in the product, you can't taste them. It's honestly very cool. I guess when you say that, like, binds to the tongue, I assume you get a lot of questions saying, like, is this natural? Is this something that, like, how do you explain that to people? Like, because I do think it's a little bit of a foreign concept. Of course. Yeah. So there are things on both ends, right? Like for most flavor materials, there are both artificial and natural sources. Most of what Imbibe does with taste modulation is exclusively natural, just because when you think about the types of products where you might need taste modulation, like there's a lot of functionals that you want to mask or you're using alternate sweeteners that you need to enhance.

17:51And those tend to be those like better for you products that consumers just demand the natural flavor. So it is very common that a lot of taste modulation ingredients that are great and available natural from natural sources. So you really do have a lot of options in the taste modulation space, even if you're trying to make a natural flavor claim. That's really cool. Some of the things that we kind of use, like the bitter blotters or the sour masters, at least on my end, or even kind of the sweetness. I don't know what you call them, but like things that help with sweetness. Yeah, like a sweetness enhancer.

18:25Sweetness enhancer. Yeah. For, let's say, bitter blockers, you do get like botanical and herb that tastes really bitter, right? Herbs are generally or the ones that give you the health benefits are generally very concentrated, very bitter, right? So they can be hard to stomach without a bitter blocker. Absolutely. Yeah. And that's, I think, what we see a lot is the push right now is to make all of these products that are better for you and have all of these nutritional claims and different types of health objectives that people are trying to achieve. So every kid kind of knows this from like being told to eat their vegetables.

18:59The downside is that like a lot of the things that are healthy for us, like don't always taste the best. So your proteins, your like adaptogens, these things tend to have like some off notes, It's oftentimes bitterness. Maybe it's metallic. Maybe it's grassy. It could be a whole host of things. But bitter blockers and other modulators can really help cover those up while still keeping the label very friendly, very clean, and looking how you want it. For sure. Because you've worked with a lot of products and you've worked with a lot of people, what have you noticed to be a part where a lot of food entrepreneurs or people in CPG get stuck at when they're developing a product?

19:41Yeah. Yeah, I think it's very common to want to throw the kitchen sink in a product and have a lot of combinations of different ingredients that offer health benefits. It's not enough to just be like a protein shake anymore. You have to add different sources of proteins and different. Maybe this one is more of a brain boosting one or there's all kinds of different stuff, right, that's happening. And so the thing to be aware of is like with each thing you add, there's probably some sort of taste trade off. that's coming along with it. And when these systems are simple, like maybe there's one functional ingredient, maybe you're using sugar, it can be pretty easy to cover that up.

20:21You might just be able to cover it just with your sweetener or with your flavor that's characterizing. But as you start to build these more complex systems with additional things to achieve all of the claims that you want to achieve, that's where you sometimes get a lot of different off notes happening for you at once. And that can be a lot more challenging to address because I don't even see like maybe you got one note masked completely and that leaves room for the other off note that was in there all along to shine. And then maybe you throw a natural high intensity sweetener on top of it. And so you lose some of the just natural sweetness curve and masking abilities of sugar.

21:03Maybe you introduce some off notes that are associated with that ingredient. And all of a sudden you have this cocktail of something that just it doesn't taste how you thought it would. And you don't really know what to do about it. So I think that can be pretty common. No, this is a really good point. Every ingredient you add to some recipe, right? Yeah. Does change it dramatically because food interacts. It's not just like adding and you'll get something right. Food interacts in so many different ways. And we're just talking about flavors right now, like protein, fat, carbs, like water. is a big one, right?

21:37Absolutely. These are all huge factors of like how a product changes when you want to add something without much thought in a sense, right? Totally, yeah. They interact in all kinds of ways, sometimes in ways that are kind of unpredictable. Yeah, it's probably the biggest advice I can give when dealing with a system like that is like looking at it holistically and whether like you're equipped to do that or you can work with somebody that is because you want to understand where all of the challenging pieces that you're working with are coming from. You want to understand, like, if I pull this lever, what happens, looking at each variable in isolation and understanding that some of the challenges your product might not just be coming from the things that you're adding, but from the things that, like, you're trying to remove.

22:20So we talked about sugar being a great masker and mouthfeel enhancer. Fat is as well. So you also might want to consider, like, the things that you've stripped away in an effort to maybe make your product more healthy and how can we build some of that sensation back? Let's do a little fun little game. So obviously a lot of juices and sodas have sugar in it, right? And people want to take out the sugar. What happens when you take out sugar from a formula? And I guess I deal with some high-intensity sweeteners or other sweetener systems, and sometimes they're hard to match, right? Absolutely, yeah.

22:53Could you just describe generally what you've seen when people want to remove sugar, which I assume you have a lot of projects that want to remove a lot of sugar? Oh yeah, it's very, very common. So first thing that is probably the most obvious is, right, it's less sweet. But the less obvious thing is you lose a ton of body and mouthfeel as well. So it's going to feel thin. And what that can sometimes lead to is things that that body and mouthfeel were covering up, maybe are now exposed. That could just look like weird holes in your profile where there's just a gap in the flavor. It could look like an off note coming out.

23:30And then obviously because you're lacking that sweetness, you're going to probably build it back with some other non-caloric sweetener, I would assume. Like let's say Stevia or Montfruit. Exactly. Those are probably our two biggest that we'll see. And while those products have come a long way, they come with their own challenges. Like sugar is your gold standard for sweetness. And the goal with those high-intensity sweeteners is to get them as sugar-like as possible. That doesn't happen by accident. So you add a stevia and now all of a sudden you might have some sweetness peaks instead of that nice kind of bell curve.

24:07But you'll come up all in front, right? Yeah. Instead of like spreads out. Or you might get a ton of intense linger depending on your usage. You might get some metallic or some bitterness. Some people are really sensitive to stevia and licorice notes or things like that. Monk fruit, also challenging. It has a bit more characterizing flavor than stevia. So you might at higher levels start to get like some tea-like notes people might describe it as or like dried fruit. So it can enhance those types of things. Similar deal with having that linger. So a lot of consumers can't necessarily pinpoint, oh, I hate the linger on this product or whatever.

24:47But they can tell that it's not sugar-like even if they can't describe it to you. Yes, yes, yes. A lot of what you'll see when you pull back sugar and try to build back with something else is a subtle like it's not just quite right. It's not quite right. Yeah, it's Uncanny Valley, right? In a sense. Yes, 100 % Uncanny Valley is exactly it. Love it. We're going to wrap up a little bit here. I'd love to hear some of the trends you've been noticing in the drinks sector that you find really interesting. Totally. So definitely as natural and clean label as possible. You get a lot of customers even that are hesitant about putting flavor on their label, or they want that transparency of like, well, can you tell me exactly what's in your flavor so that I can label it that way?

25:34And there are two reasons why we don't really do that. The first being like your flavor house, the way they make money by selling these flavors that are trade secrets. So a lot of times that's really carefully guarded IP for the company that you're working with. But the other thing that I think is like less obvious to people is sometimes that transparency doesn't really help you out. People ask more questions, right? Exactly. And like what you might see on your label then is chemical names that sound a bit scary. Reality, these are chemicals that occur in all the foods we eat every day and are very safe.