Flavor compounds are important indicators of food quality: they not only determine the sensory properties of our food and help to determine its technological properties, but they may also serve as indicators of its spoilage and its effects on our health. Health effects are discussed above all for many plants and extracts thereof. However, identification of biologically active constituents and verification of their effect size, keeping in mind habitual dietary intakes and potential toxicity, is often limited by in vitro screening models not fully resembling in vivo conditions. Ideally, when demonstrating mechanisms involved in potential health effects in in vitro systems, all processes of absorption, transport, metabolic conversion, and excretion should be considered as well as toxicological effects. Since this is rarely the case, a combination of cell culture studies keeping as many factors of the above in mind, and addressing a multitude of cellular mechanisms involved in the health outcome may provide adequate data to justify human intervention studies for the conclusive proof of effect. We, here, present the results of a 7-year research program, that was aimed at setting up in vitro cell culture models to reveal mechanistic data that support the initiation of human intervention studies for demonstrating the satiating and appetite-stimulating effects of taste-active plant constituents. With this approach, we identified nonivamide, capsaicin analog present in chili pepper showing a pungency half as capsaicin, as well cinnamyl isobutyrate, a cinnamon constituent, as a plant constituent that reduces food intake, whereas homoeriodictyol, a bitter-masking compound present in the Eriodictyon californicum, was identified as an appetite-stimulating compound. For bitter-tasting food constituents, i.e. the amino acid L-arginine, an appetite-reducing effect was demonstrated, to be mediated by bitter taste sensing chemoreceptors localized in the oral cavity and in the stomach. The here presented work provides a review of cell models suitable for the identification of satiating and/or appetite-stimulating flavor compounds, in particular taste-active compounds which might help to control food intake and to maintain a healthy body weight.

In vitro models for the identification of flavor compounds helping to control food intake

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