Unlocking the opportunities for creating sustainable, flavorful and healthy high-protein “blue foods”: Focusing on the impacts of protein-flavor interactions

Background Blue foods are critical for human nutrition and play an important role in global food supply. Structure design and flavor regulation of blue food based on the interaction theory of food components are topical issues in food science research. Therefore, designing flavorful, high-protein blue foods from the perspective of protein-flavor interactions is an important direction for food science and technology development in the future. Scope and approach This paper reviews recent advances in research on blue food protein-flavor interactions, and the factors influencing them. Additionally, this review demonstrated the influence of oral processing on the flavor perception of blue foods. Finally, we present existing knowledge gaps and discuss directions for the sustainable future production of high-protein blue foods. Key findings and conclusions Proteins can bind to flavor compounds reversibly or irreversibly, thereby affecting the quality of the final product. Factors like the number of binding sites of proteins, temperature, pH, ionic strength, and exogenous additives, can regulate the protein-flavor compound binding/adsorption. Understanding the oral processing of blue foods, especially the chewing and swallowing processes, on the flavor perception of blue foods is also essential to the development of desirable high-protein “blue foods”. Future research should focus on multiple flavor perception, new “green” processing, and salt reduction strategies for the targeted design of high-protein blue foods. Further investigations on the interactions of proteins with flavor compounds from the perspective of protein oxidation, and to elucidate the effects of oral processing on flavor perception during blue food consumption, are required.