Enhancing saltiness perception through food structure design: multi-scale mechanisms and strategies

Enhancing saltiness perception through food structure design is a promising sodium reduction strategy. This review elucidates multi-scale mechanisms from food structure, oral processing, to sensory integration. It also summarizes strategies for enhancing saltiness perception via sodium release, cross-modal synergies, and consumer preferences. Furthermore, it highlights artificial intelligence and dynamic modeling for predictive structural design of low-sodium food. This review provides a theoretical basis for the precise design of low-sodium foods.