Salt reduction strategies and enhanced saltiness perception mechanisms for prepared dishes: A review

Abstract Healthy prepared dishes are receiving increasing attention, with high salt content being their prominent feature, and a long‐term high sodium diet may lead to various diseases. At present, replacing NaCl with non‐sodium salts has become the main salt reduction method, but these substitutes will bring adverse flavors to the product, and excessive use of KCl will also affect health. Therefore, the study of flavor peptides combined with new green technologies is a potentially effective strategy to reduce salt without reducing saltiness. This article reviews the current salt reduction strategies, the effects of food matrix, basic amino acids, other tastes and odors on saltiness, and the relationship between saltiness and receptor structure and transduction mechanism. In addition, the saltiness assessment methods were introduced, and the current challenges faced by the strategy of reducing salt without reducing saltiness were discussed. The preparation of salty peptides and salty enhancing peptides from natural foods and the combination of them with new green technologies may be an effective method for salt reduction in the food industry. This review can provide theoretical reference for the prepared dishes industry to reduce salt without reducing saltiness.