# Turning Kids’ Medicines From Bitter to Better - Source: Frontiers for Young Minds (kids.frontiersin.org), CC BY, Frontiers for Young Minds, CC BY 4.0 - Reading level: Grades 9 and up - Subjects: Science - Topics: taste, bitter, medicines, active, ingredient, medicine - Length: 2087 words, about 15 min - Published: 2026-09-15 - Original: - Page: - Open in Sprouts: ### Abstract Medicines contain an active ingredient (also called a drug) that makes them work, but this drug can often taste unpleasant, making the medicine difficult to swallow. If the medicine is not taken properly, it will not work as well as it should, and the person taking it might not recover from their medical condition. Children are more sensitive to taste than adults, so scientists are working hard to make medicines taste better for kids, so taking them is not a battle. This article explores how scientists try to “hide” the yucky taste of medicines by using clever tricks called taste-masking techniques, such as adding special tasty ingredients, coating the active ingredient, or by using ingredients that can block bitter taste, all with the aim of making medicines easier to take. ## Medicines Often Taste Bitter Nature is great at stopping us from eating harmful things! On the tongue, the taste buds contain taste receptors that detect ingredients in the things we eat or drink and send taste information like sweet, salty, sour, and bitter to the brain. Taste receptors are meant to detect dangerous or toxic things we put in our mouths by mistake, which often taste bitter. However, sometimes we need to take medicines that contain a bitter active ingredient. Taking the right amount of medicine helps the body get completely better, but sometimes medicines taste so bitter that kids do not want to take them \[1\]. The bitter active ingredient naturally activates “warning sensors” on the tongue. Medicines also contain other ingredients, for example to make them into a liquid syrup or a solid form like a tablet or a capsule. These inactive ingredients are called excipients. Think of excipients as the “sidekicks” in medicines. They do not fight the illness, but they help the active ingredient to do its job better, for example to make it last longer or taste better. This article, written by a team of scientists who are dedicated to designing medicines for children, explains how researchers are trying to make medicines taste better. ## Designing Medicines With Children In Mind Children’s taste buds and taste receptors are more sensitive to taste than those of adults, making the bitter taste of some medicines seem much stronger to kids (Figure 1A). \[2\]. Sourness also feels much stronger to kids than adults, and children tend to like sweetness more than adults do. If a medicine tastes bad, kids might refuse to take it, and then their medical problems will not improve. Children’s bodies are different from adults’ bodies, which means that some ingredients that are safe for grown-ups can be harmful to kids. Scientists must make sure that any excipients used in medicines for children are safe for kids to take. So, scientists need to make medicines that are safe, tasty enough that kids are willing to take them, and are also easy to swallow. - Figure 1 - (A) The active substance in a medicine activates the bitter receptors on the tongue, which sends the message to the brain. - (B) Palatable excipients can improve it: they activate all the other “good taste” receptors and send the message to the brain which is fooled to think it does not taste bitter. ## How Do Scientists “Hide” Bad Tastes? To hide the bad tastes of some medicines, scientists use clever tricks called taste-masking techniques. Next, we will describe a few of these techniques \[3\]. ### Using Palatable Excipients Something palatable is tasty, enjoyable, and pleasant. Some excipients help a medicine to taste better by making it sweet or flavored (Figure 1B), while others help with the texture, making medicines feel smoother in the mouth. Scientists often add sweet excipients to make a medicine taste good enough to take. Some medicines contain a type of sugar called sucrose. Watch out for your teeth, as sucrose can cause tooth decay. It is a good idea to rinse your mouth with water after taking medicines containing sucrose. Sugar-free sweeteners, such as artificial sweeteners or sugar substitutes, are used in low calorie or “diet” foods and drinks. They can also be added to medicines to avoid adding sugar but still boost sweetness. In addition, yummy flavors like strawberry, orange, or vanilla are also often added to a medicine to further help cover up the bad taste. ### Changing How Easily the Active Ingredient Dissolves When an active ingredient dissolves quickly in saliva, its molecules can easily reach the taste buds and taste receptors in the mouth, so its taste becomes noticeable right away. The unpleasant taste can be reduced if the active ingredient is changed so that it does not dissolve as quickly in the saliva (Figure 2A). - Figure 2 - (A) Excipients can change how easily the active ingredient dissolves in saliva, so there is less of it available. - (B) Trapping the active ingredient by complexation creates a shield around the bitter active ingredient. In both situations, the excipients decrease the amount of bitter active substance that can activate less the receptors so that it feels less bitter to the brain. ### Trapping the Active Incredient Another way to trick the taste buds so that they cannot easily detect the taste of the active ingredient is by trapping it through a process called complexation (Figure 2B). In complexation, a molecular barrier is created between the active ingredient and the taste buds. This can be done in two ways: ion-exchange resins (IERs) and cyclodextrins. They have the same goal of keeping the active ingredient “hidden” in the mouth while releasing it once the medicine has been swallowed. IERs are small beads that carry tiny electrical charges. The active ingredient binds to these charged beads, forming a stable complex. The complex stays intact in saliva, but after being swallowed it reaches the stomach where the acidity releases the active drug from the IER. Then the drug can be absorbed into the body. IERs create an effective taste barrier without changing the medicine’s action. Cyclodextrins are sugar molecules shaped like a cone without a tip, but with a hollow center like a doughnut. The active drug fits partly inside this cavity like a key in a lock. The cavity "hides” the bitter parts of the active ingredient from taste buds. Once swallowed, this complex breaks apart, so that the active ingredient is freed for absorption and action. ### Coating the Medicine Imagine wrapping a bitter pill in a shell or coating stops the bitter ingredient from touching the taste buds (Figure 3). Special coatings made of polymers can be applied to tablets and granules, and sometimes directly onto the powder particles of the active ingredients themselves. Some polymers only dissolve in the acid conditions of the stomach and not in saliva. Other coatings are made of fatty substances that remain intact when you swallow them but break down by melting in the gut to release the active drug. That way, you cannot taste anything in your mouth, but the medicine still works. - Figure 3 - (A) By coating the medicine, a coat (red here) is applied around the bitter drug and it does not fit well in the receptor anymore (B) Bitter blockers and modifiers can mess with the bitter receptor or signal to the brain. - In both situations, bitterness is not perceived or much less. ### Bitter Blockers and Modifiers Bitter blockers are ingredients that stop the bitter signals from being sent from the tongue to the brain \[4\]. Some blockers attach to the tongue’s bitter receptors, so the bitter active ingredient itself cannot interact with them. Others change how the receptors respond, making the bitter taste seem weaker or delayed. This means you taste less bitterness even though the medicine is the same. The effects of bitter blockers and modifiers vary, and they can last for up to about an hour \[5\]. Examples include sodium glutamate and adenosine 5′-monophosphate (AMP), which occur naturally in the body. Bitter blockers and modifiers do not change how the medicine works, they simply make it easier to swallow. Together, all these approaches can help create medicines that children are more willing to take, improving their comfort and making medical treatment easier for families. Scientists may have to try more than one approach for taste masking, as its success depends on the properties of the active ingredient and the type of medicine being developed. It is important to remember that only excipients that have been tested and found to be safe for children are used in kids’ medicines. ## Why Should Children Care? There are many real-life examples of medicines that were improved for kids by using the methods explained in this article: - Antibiotics (for infections) or paracetamol (for pain relief), made into a palatable syrup - Painkillers that “melt” in the mouth - Vitamins in chewable tablets or gummies - Sachets containing tiny sprinkles of salts for diarrhea - These changes help kids take their medicines without fuss, so they can get better faster. So, the next time you take a nicely flavored sweet strawberry medicine instead of a bitter pill, thank the scientists who worked hard to make the medicine fit your body, your taste, and your needs. ### Glossary Taste Buds: ↑ Tiny bumps on the tongue that help you taste things like sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. Taste Receptor: ↑ Special protein inside taste buds that catch flavors from food and send signals to your brain, telling it whether something tastes sweet, salty, sour, or bitter. Active Ingredient: ↑ The part of a medicine that actually treats your illness. Excipients: ↑ Everything else in a pill or syrup that helps the medicine to work, or to make it taste better. Taste Masking: ↑ Tricks used to hide the yucky taste of medicine, so it tastes better (like fruity or sweet) and is easier for kids to take. Palatable: ↑ It means something tastes good and pleasant to eat. Complexation: ↑ When a part of a chemical is surrounded by or attached to other molecules to form a new, larger structure, called a complex. Polymers: ↑ Very large molecules made up of many smaller molecules hooked together in a repeating pattern. ## Acknowledgments The original 2014 paper was written by members of the “Taste Assessment and Taste Masking” workstream of the European Formulation Initiative (EuPFI https://eupfi.co.uk/). The EuPFI is a collaborative consortium founded in 2007 to improve the development of safe, age-appropriate medicines for children. Comprising experts from academia, industry, and hospitals, it focuses on overcoming scientific, regulatory, and technical challenges in pediatric drug formulation in a pre-competitive environment. ## AI Tool Statement The author(s) declared that Generative AI was not used in the creation of this manuscript. Any alternative text (alt text) provided alongside figures in this article has been generated by Frontiers with the support of artificial intelligence and reasonable efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, including review by the authors wherever possible. If you identify any issues, please contact us. ## Conflict of Interest Author JW was employed by Jenny Walsh Consulting. Neither author received any compensation or payment for this work. Both authors declared that this work was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. ### References \[1\] ↑ Ranmal, S. R., Walsh, J., and Tuleu, C. 2025. Poor-tasting pediatric medicines: Part 1. A scoping review of their impact on patient acceptability, medication adherence, and treatment outcomes. Front. Drug Deliv. 22:1553286. doi: 10.3389/fddev.2025.1553286 \[2\] ↑ Ranmal, S. R., Nhouchi, Z., Keeley, A., Adler, L., Lavarde, M., and Pensé-Lhéritier, A. M., et al 2023. Taste assessment for paediatric drug development: a comparison of bitterness taste aversion in children versus Naïve and expert young adult assessors. Int. J. Pharm. 647:123494. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpharm \[3\] ↑ Walsh, J., Cram, A., Woertz, K., Breitkreutz, J., Winzenburg, G., and Turner, R., et al 2014. Playing hide and seek with poorly tasting paediatric medicines: do not forget the excipients. Adv. Drug Deliv. Rev. 73:14–33. doi: 10.1016/j.addr.2014.02.012 \[4\] ↑ Andrews, D., Salunke, S., Cram, A., Bennett, J., Ives, R. S., and Basit, A, W., et al 2021. Bitter-blockers as a taste masking strategy: a systematic review towards their utility in pharmaceuticals. Eur. J. Pharm. Biopharm. 158:35–51. doi: 10.1016/j.ejpb.2020.10.017 \[5\] ↑ El-Sahn, M., Elliott, R., El-Sahn, M., Lucas, I., Kong, K., and Walsh, J., et al 2025. Poor-tasting pediatric medicines: part 2. Exploring caregiver and healthcare provider values and preferences for a novel taste-blocker product to improve acceptability. Front. Drug Deliv. 5:1555522. doi: 10.3389/fddev.2025.1555522 ## Picture credits - Frontiers for Young Minds, CC BY 4.0 () - Frontiers for Young Minds, CC BY 4.0 () - Frontiers for Young Minds, CC BY 4.0 ()