GET ready to chill out with the world’s coolest drinks. The secret? A natural
food additive with 35 times the cooling power of menthol—but no minty
flavour whatsoever.
It could bring a supercool fresh tang to a wide range of products, including
beer, bottled water, citrus drinks, chocolate and confectionery, says Thomas
Hofmann, whose team at the German Research Centre for Food Chemistry in
Garching, Munich, discovered the new substance. And because it “cools” skin 250
times as intensely as mint, they say it could add fresh zest to cosmetics such
as anti-perspirants.
The effects of the new substance last for half an hour, twice as long as
menthol, the extract that gives peppermint and spearmint their icy zing. “We’ve
found the world’s most powerful natural cooling agent without a mint odour,”
says Hofmann.
Advertisement
“It’s a fascinating discovery,” agrees Andy Taylor, a flavour technologist at
the University of Nottingham. “I don’t think anyone has ever found a cooling
agent without menthol flavour,” he says.
Hofmann’s team isolated the substance from roasted dark malt, a key
ingredient for brewing beers and whiskies. It belongs to a family of chemicals
called cyclic alpha-keto enamines. When a panel of tasters sampled the
substance, they found it cooled as well as menthol even when concentrations were
35 times lower. It also cooled skin as effectively at concentrations 250 times
lower.
Hofmann says that like menthol, the substance “cools” by its effect on nerve
endings. “There’s no evaporation, and no temperature change,” he says. So
cooling is a slight misnomer. Nevertheless, Taylor says that like menthol, the
substance activates so-called “trigeminal” receptors found throughout the mouth,
cheeks and throat. They seem to register spice-based
“temperature”—anything from the hotness of curry to the coolness of
menthol, he says.
Hofmann says it won’t replace menthol in products such as mints, chewing
gums, toothpastes and mouthwashes. But because it has no taste, you can give a
fresh zing to a massive range of things without altering the flavour.
And since we’ve been consuming the substances for centuries in beer and
whisky, it is unlikely to be harmful, he says. The first “supercooled” products
could be on the market within two years, says Hofmann.
Graham Young, president of the British Society of Flavourists, says there are
already some artificial cooling agents, but this is the first natural one apart
from menthol. “It could be useful from a marketing point of view,” he says.