Henry Ford once famously remarked that, if he had asked his customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse. He might have added that, if he had asked his marketing team what they thought their customers wanted, they may well have said the same slow horse with a slightly different coloured forelock.

Salt reduction is big business and it is only going to get bigger as the health and wellness juggernaut continues to pull legislators, consumers and the food industry along in its wake. Companies are already marketing extremely promising flavour enhancers designed to reduce sodium levels without impacting on taste and other functional properties. But there is also more basic research going on into our perception of saltiness, and that research is starting to yield exciting results.

Beauty and the feast

Scientists at the University of Nottingham, UK, are developing radical 'fast structuring' technologies that could enable 'late stage customisation' of a range of consumer products from spreads to cosmetics.

What's powdery, white, some would say addictive, and guaranteed to get politicians frothing at the mouth? No, not crack cocaine, but something 99% of us have in our store cupboards: sugar. As innocuous as it might seem, the white stuff lurking in our favourite foods and drinks is rapidly turning into public enemy number one as we look for someone to blame for our expanding waistlines.

Food companies operate on slim margins at the best of times, so backing the right horse when it comes to allocating limited R&D resources is absolutely critical, says Dr Diederick Meyer - the man in charge of setting the research agenda at Dutch ingredients giant Sensus - a subsidiary of farmer-owned Royal Cosun Group.