Researchers find safer saltiness in plain soy sauce

The Korea Food Research Institute (KFRI) said yesterday it has found a natural substance that makes food taste salty without ill health effects.

And they found it in traditional Korean soy sauce.

A research team under professor Ryu Mi-ra said it has find a substance in soy sauce that tastes salty without high sodium levels. It got stronger the longer the soy sauce was fermented.

Sodium exacerbates health problems such as high blood pressure.

The team said there are two ways people taste saltiness. One is through sodium and the other is through positive ions. The substance extracted from the soy sauce has some sodium but also positive ions.

“We provided one group of mice with water with a salt concentration of 100 millimoles and another with 100 millimoles of salt and 0.25 percent of the substance extracted from soy sauce,” said Kim Bo-kyung, at research fellow at KFRI.

“The group that drank the second batch reacted the same as they did to water with a salt concentration of 250 millimoles.”

The research has been patented locally and patents have been applied for in the U.S. and Japan.

By Kim Jung-yoon [kjy@joongang.co.kr]