Unlocking the Potential of Taste and Taste-active Peptides: Bridging Structural Characteristics and Biological Activities with Food and Pharmaceutical Applications

Increasingly consumers demand both good taste and health benefits from foods. Taste/taste-active peptides are attracting growing research interest, owing to their potential as tastants, taste enhancers/suppressors, and therapeutic agents. They impart sweet, bitter, umami, salty or sour tastes, and/or confer taste-enhancing effects (e.g. kokumi peptides, gamma-glutamyl peptides, and Maillard reacted peptides). Some already demonstrated desirable bioactivities (e.g. antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antihypertensive, hypoglycemic, immunomodulatory, intestinal health-promoting, brain performance-boosting and neuro-protective effects). This review makes a contribution to the development of taste/taste-active peptides possessing desired taste, nutritional and health properties. The type, source, characteristics, structure-taste relationship, bioactivities, preparation, separation, purification, characterization and applications of these peptides are overviewed. More efforts need to be directed towards understanding the mechanisms underlying the taste properties of taste/taste-active peptides and their interactions, together with validation of their biological functions.