Bibliometric Analysis of the Scientific Studies on the Kokumi in Foods

Kokumi is different from the traditional five food basic tastes, namely sourness, sweetness, bitterness, saltiness, and umami. It not only gives foods a unique sense of richness, durability, and pleasure, but also achieves several sensory effects, for instance, enhancing saltiness and umami without reducing saltiness. Consequently, the consumers' pursuit of delicacy and health could be satisfied. Although many studies have reported the kokumi-related research, and the consensus on a series of mechanisms, laws and applications of kokumi has been achieved, the current status, academic context, hotspots, challenges and also the development trends of the kokumi research still lack systematic analysis. Therefore, in this work, the progress of kokumi research in the past fifteen years have been firstly analyzed using the bibliometric analysis methods, and the main hotspots and challenges of kokumi research have been concluded through literature review. The results of this work showed that the popularity of kokumi research was constantly increasing. The interdisciplinary fields such as food science, chemistry, nutrition, biochemistry, agriculture, behavioral science, and neuroscience were involved in the kokumi research. Both institutions and researchers of China had strong international discourse power in the research of the kokumi science. The hot topics on the kokumi research mainly included the chemical basis, the food sources and the evaluation methods of kokumi, the impact of kokumi on the overall sensory flavor of food, as well as the structural identification, separation, preparation, and health effects of the kokumi substances. Challenges in the kokumi research included the discovery and applications of the novel kokumi substances. This work can provide some theoretical references for the food industry to accurately grasp the development trend of kokumi research, deeply reveal the kokumi mechanism and expand the research area of the kokumi substances.