How potassium chloride tastes alone and mixed with salt
What it found
Adding potassium chloride to salt slightly increased the salty taste in people.
Mixing regular salt with potassium chloride reduced bitter, chemical, and metallic off-tastes.
What they found
Studies in people
Salty taste perception
Adding potassium chloride made things taste slightly saltier. People chose the word salty more often when it was mixed with regular salt.
Unpleasant off-tastes
Mixing regular salt with potassium chloride lowered unwanted flavors. Tasters noticed less bitter, chemical, and metallic taste in the blends.
What the authors conclude
- They found that mixing regular salt with potassium chloride can reduce the unpleasant tastes people notice.
- Their results suggest this blend could help food makers lower sodium while keeping products tasty.
How it was done
People are trying to eat less sodium for health reasons, so food makers want ways to lower salt while keeping food tasty. Potassium chloride is one option, but many find its taste unpleasant.
Tasters were given mixtures of potassium chloride and regular salt at different strengths. They picked words from a set list to describe what they tasted.
What it can’t tell you
- We summarised it from the abstract only.
- This work only measured how things taste right away.
- It cannot show whether people will actually buy or enjoy foods made with these mixtures over time.
The paper
- Title
- Taste properties of potassium chloride alone and in mixtures with sodium chloride using a check-all-that-apply method
- Type
- Study
- Evidence
- Studies in people
- Summarised from
- Abstract only
- Cite
- Sinopoli DA, Lawless HT (2012). Taste properties of potassium chloride alone and in mixtures with sodium chloride using a check-all-that-apply method. Journal of food science. doi:10.1111/j.1750-3841.2012.02862.xPubMed 22901084DOI
Summary written 30 Sep 2026. Check it against the paper before it changes what you eat. How we summarise papers · Report an error