IFT Live 2012

When talking about texture-related ingredients and strategies being used to meet textural needs in food products, here’s one that’s enough to make ice cream manufacturers scream.

With the cost of guar gum climbing to new heights and demand soaring, a growing number of food companies are searching for cost-effective alternatives that will act as thickeners in a variety of food and beverage formulations. Ashland Specialty Products (booth 2848), showcases two new cellulose gum products, Aquacel^™ GSH and Aquasorb^™ A-500, that can be used either to supplement or replace guar. These two cost-effective options deliver the required flavor and consistency profiles in beverages, baked goods, and ice creams.

For ice cream, Aquacel GSH is said to have outstanding viscosity synergy with guar gum to enable formulators to either replace guar all together or to reduce the overall doses of the total hydrocolloid in their formulations. The company selected Bruce Tharp, a leading industry expert, to head a panel test of ice cream samples developed in Ashland’s laboratories. From a sensory perspective, Tharp was unable to tell any significant difference between ice creams using guar gum and those using cellulose gum or blends of the two. “If anything, the ice creams with cellulose gums have slightly more body, as typically seen in premium brands,” noted Tharp. “Cellulose gum has always been considered a premier stabilizer in ice cream, but historically guar gum has been cheaper. It does not surprise me that with guar prices rising, formulators are now switching back.”

For bakery products, Aquasorb A-500 has exceptional water-binding capacity. Formulators are not only seeing the guar/cellulose gum synergies, but are also improving their products’ yield, moisture, appearance, and shelf life.

BASF Nutrition & Health (booth 1611), is highlighting innovative food and beverage performance ingredients that target formulators looking for the “perfect combination” of texture, volume, structure, taste, and shelf life for a variety of applications. The company invites attendees to “get better acquainted with our products, concepts, and solutions so together we can develop ideas to meet consumer demand worldwide, including diverse cultures and eating experiences,” said Samy Jandali, Vice President, BASF Nutrition & Health, North America.

For example, BASF offers Lamequick whipping agents that provide excellent taste and pleasant mouthfeel in whipped desserts, cream fillings, cake decorating creams, ice cream, and frozen desserts. They are made largely from mono- and polyunsaturated fatty acids. In decorating creams, Lamequick provides sharp edges when piping, smooth texture for spreading, and stability for serving. In desserts, it creates a light and creamy texture. These spray-dried powders, when whipped up with milk or water, produce light and creamy foams.

BASF is also highlighting Spongolit aerating emulsifiers, which allow cakes to be produced faster and with consistent quality. Used in whipped batters for a variety of cakes, the emulsifiers ensure excellent stability, volume, and crumb structure. With Spongolit, all components may be added at the same time and whipped together. It is ideal for small bakeries, large-scale cake manufacturing, and home-use cake mixes. The emulsifiers are available as spray-dried powders.

Visitors to the BASF booth can sample light and fluffy sponge cake bites with creamy frosting, and smooth and airy chocolate mousse. Other prototypes featuring nutraceutical ingredients are also available.

A recent merger may also provide new opportunities for texture. Colloides Naturels International and Bio Serae laboratories are coming together to become Nexira (booth 3375). Nexira and its food division (previously CNI) are launching a new range of highly purified acacia gum products with enhanced properties. The attributes of this new acacia range was achieved through a proprietary process developed by the Nexira R&D team to protect the natural characteristics of the gum. The acacia gum provides better transparency with reduced turbidity, which broadens the scope of applications for this natural soluble fiber.

Palsgaard^® Extrulce 258, the latest addition to a family of emulsifier/stabilizer blends for extruded ice cream, is introduced by Palsgaard (booth 329). The blend provides a rich and creamy texture to ice cream, by preventing the formation of coarse ice crystals. It facilitates the incorporation of air into the mix, giving a high and stable overrun, and protects ice cream from damage that could be caused by heat shock should it be exposed to fluctuating temperatures during distribution and storage. Moreover, it is based on tara gum and not increasingly expensive guar gum.

Also making its debut for the first time in the U.S. market is Palsgaard Ice Triple—a fully integrated emulsifier and stabilizer system with a lower content of guar gum that helps deliver the best quality ice cream by adding an extremely smooth and creamy sensation; providing excellent heat shock stability that ensures a pleasant texture and mouthfeel even after repeated exposure to fluctuating temperatures; and delivering the slowest melt rate.

CEAMSA (booth 3668), features carrageenan and pectin, which offer texture solutions. Derived from natural sources such as red seaweed and citrus peel, the hydrocolloids offer an optimum texture solution for all food products, including meat, dairy, water, and fruit. Representatives are on hand to discuss how to meet texture challenges with a broad range of hydrocolloids.

So for all you explorers out there, enjoy rediscovering texture on the show floor.

Texture plays a critical role throughout the product development process. Understanding its fundamental attributes can lead to innovation and product variety. Unfortunately, although a great deal of attention has been spent on the development of flavors and colors over the years, texture has been frequently overlooked and sometimes even taken for granted. At this year’s IFT Food Expo, visitors are able to see a number of emerging approaches designed for a better understanding of texture as well as ingredient innovations that can help solve texture-related challenges in food formulating.

One of the companies that has taken a pioneering approach to rediscovering texture is National Starch Food Innovation (now part of Ingredion, booth 1211). Ingredion’s Dial-In Texture Technology enables food manufacturers to target and achieve the precise food texture they desire in their product, in far less time than for typical texture explorations. The Dial-In technology is based on the company’s proprietary, data-driven modeling approach to texture understanding and formulation. It’s an integration of core capabilities in consumer insights, material science, sensory evaluation, and application and processing knowledge. It enables the company to rapidly optimize the texture system in a food application “dialing in” the appropriate level and intensity of the individual texture attributes desired. This approach, according to the company, has been instrumental in helping food manufacturers bring new products to market quickly—yogurt, baked snacks, dairy desserts, tomato-based and creamy sauces, salad dressings, and gluten-free baked goods.

Many of the prototype products featured at Ingredion’s booth demonstrate some of its latest innovations in texture. Furthermore, the company will provide a number of technical presentations, including “Impact of Processing Conditions on Stirred Yogurt Texture: Understanding the Role of Starch Functionality and Different Starch Sources” and “Advances in Carbohydrate Texturizers to Address Texture Challenges with Removing Wheat and Eggs.”

TIC Gums (booth 421), is another company that is renewing its efforts to focus on texture. According to the company, product developers are handicapped by the lack of an agreed upon language to describe texture. Developers are further challenged by the fact that texture cannot be “added” to a product at the end of the design process, but rather must be integrated into the development of a new product from the very beginning. To help overcome these challenges, the company recently developed a texture lexicon that offers clearer definitions of the different kinds of texture available and makes texture a quantifiable part of the food design process. At the Food Expo, TIC Gums uses its texture lexicon as a basis for demonstrating how blends of gums and gum systems can very closely mimic the texture, body, and adhesiveness that is lost when sugar is replaced with artificial sweeteners.

TIC Gums’ new video series, “Does This Have Gum in It?” talks about the different types and uses for gums in everyday foods. In the first episode, host Harold Nicoll speaks with Gum Guru^® Maureen Akins about how gums are used in chewing gum applications. Atkins explains the benefits of the company’s TicaPan® Coating Systems for panned confections. This system offers food manufacturers a low-cost, non-gum arabic alternative that provides a crunchier texture to the finished shell. Experience a piece of candy-coated chewing gum’s crunch and crackle, and the benefits of the system will be evident.

Through a partnership between Gum Technology Corp. (booth 3255), and Fiberstar, a new generation of texturizers is being launched. Hydro-Fi ingredients—a combination of Gum Technology’s Coyote Brand^® hydrocolloids and Fiberstar’s Citri-Fi^® citrus fiber—improves texture, increases yield, and enhances mouthfeel.

In tomorrow’s second part of this article, we’ll continue to look at new texture discoveries and explorations. Stay tuned to get a good “feel” for the emerging subject of texture.