Food Innovations: Food, Beverage Businesses Strengthen Offerings

Food, Beverage Businesses Strengthen Offerings

Rachel Adams

August 08, 2014 - Blog

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Whether adapting to meet demands for organic and more-healthful products, finding new ways to keep customers informed, or bringing new talent onboard, food and beverage businesses are making moves to better assist the industry.

Companies like Milk Specialties Global, Blue Diamond Growers, Juice Tyme, DSM, Innophos and the International Dairy-Deli Bakery Association™ (IDDBA) announced in July significant changes taking place in their businesses.
Milk Specialties Global announced its certification to manufacture organic whey proteins. Milk Specialties has three plants certified organic: Visalia, California; Mountain Lake, Minnesota; and Norfolk, Nebraska. All are certified under the U.S. National Organic Program by OCIA International Organic Certification, allowing Milk Specialties to produce organic MPC 70, MPC 80, MPC 85, MPI 85, MPI 90, NFDM, Permeate, Lactose, Cream and most recently, WPC 80.

Also improving product offerings, Innophos Holdings, Inc., announced that its subsidiary, AMT Labs, Inc., signed an exclusive license agreement to manufacture, sell and market Smart Salt® low-sodium salt substitute products in the Americas. Smart Salt’s range of salt substitute products can provide solutions to reduce sodium levels in baked goods, meat, seafood, poultry, dairy and beverage products, and adds to its existing range of sodium-reduction products. Existing products include Cal-Rise®, a slow-acting, calcium-based chemical leavening agent specifically designed to reduce overall sodium content in baked goods and Curavis® So-lo 93, a sodium-reduction product for processed meat and poultry.

Blue Diamond Growers® is improving its resources offerings via a new website introduced in July. Its Global Ingredients Division website includes a monthly almond market analysis and national agriculture statistics service reports, along with industry news and upcoming events. Additional site features include: regular crop, harvest and bloom year-round updates including drought information; food safety information, including downloadable storage guidelines; nutrition information for almonds and other nuts; and information on the variety and forms of almonds, including USDA grades.

DSM and Taiyo Kagaku Co Ltd (Taiyo) entered into a licensing deal, effective July 1, 2014, which will transfer the entirety of the Teavigo® brand EGCG business to Taiyo. Under terms of the deal, Taiyo will become the sole producer of Teavigo by the end of 2014. Previously, Teavigo had been distributed under license by Pharmachem Laboratories, Inc. (Pharmachem) in the dietary supplement segment and by DSM in the food and beverage segments.  Under terms of the Agreement, Taiyo will take responsibility for all customer segments, globally.

Two businesses to announce important personnel changes include IDDBA  and Juice Tyme. IDDBA named Michael J. Eardley its new president and chief executive officer. He succeeds Carol Christison who passed away in March 2014, after leading the association for 31 years. Eardley will join the IDDBA on August 25 from HEB Grocery Company in San Antonio, Texas, where he has worked for the past 13 years in various roles with increasing responsibility, becoming the director of deli, cheese and prepared Foods in 2009.

Juice Tyme announced Mark Schacht as vice president of business development. Schacht officially joined the Juice Tyme team on April 7, to lead field sales and new business initiatives.

“The decision to join juice Tyme was an easy one," Schacht said. “The company has strong manufacturing and a loyal customer base, which allows for significant growth potential in the beverage category. We plan on leveraging our existing infrastructure by enhancing our selling platform, ramping up our innovation pipeline, and expanding into new beverage categories."

FOOD INNOVATIONS: A CHANCE to Create Affordable Healthy Food

A CHANCE to Create Affordable Healthy Food

Lynn Kuntz

July 09, 2014 - Blogs

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One of the oft-repeated barriers to consumption of a healthy diet is the cost, especially for the poor. And companies that look at creating healthy foods and beverages are concerned about potentially low margins. But the CHANCE project, a three-and-a-half year research initiative that gathered together academics, food and drink industry representatives and SMEs to address poor nutrition of European citizens living on a low budget, suggests otherwise.

On July 2, 2014 these experts gathered at the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts, Brussels, to hear the final results from the CHANCE project, and attend presentations from other nutrition experts, at the conference: “Targeting at-risk-of-poverty populations in Europe with affordable and nutritionally enhanced food products."

Antonella Samoggia, a CHANCE project economist at the University of Bologna, Italy, pointed out that “Low-cost healthy food products compete with less healthy foods, which are often cheaper for the consumers and have a higher financial return for the food industry."

But that’s not necessarily a given. One of the goals of the program was formulating nutritionally enhanced food prototypes for economically disadvantaged people (defined as those with less than 60% of the average income). These items used low-cost ingredients with nutrients lacking in the diet along with lower-cost packaging. Among the prototypes were: ham with lower salt content, more pork liver and higher levels of vitamins A, D and E; a bread made with a soybean ingredient that increased its fiber, mineral, protein and vitamin content; ketchup with seeds and skin from tomato by-processing that contained up to ten times the amount of dietary fiber; as well as pizza, cheese, and a variety of blueberry-based products.

These specially formulated products underwent various economic and sensory tests, pitting competitiveness against leading brands. The results showed that the CHANCE products were indistinguishable in taste compared to leading brands. Researchers also found preliminary production costs were similar or lower for all the prototypes compared to corresponding traditional products. They found a few unresolved issues, such as decreased bread shelf life, and concluded that “to ensure commercial success, correct labelling, marketing and advertising would need to be implemented too in order to attract retailers and consumers."

While this work did not tackle the issue of food preferences for those that think a full-calorie Mountain Dew coupled with a Twinkie makes a cheap, convenient and delicious breakfast, it does highlight the economic feasibility of low-cost, yet nutritious foods for the masses. Pizza seems an ideal project given its popularity in venues from a school lunchroom to a quick dinner or even a party snack. Sodium reduction opportunities abound, in everything from the crust to the topping of meat and cheese. Adding fiber has become easier, and not just in ketchup and bread given the expansive number of ingredients.

So, while nutritious foods like high-fiber bread and ketchup for the huddled masses might not carry the same cachet as something like a Belle Chevre Goat Cheese Cheesecake (which is yours for only $34.95 for 27 ounces), it’s a worthwhile endeavor that actually provides a tangible benefit to society by alleviating hunger and under-nutrition, as well as adding to your bottom line.
   -Lynn A. Kuntz

INNOVATION: What’s Inside Matters

What’s Inside Matters

Judie Bizzozero

May 20, 2014 - Blogs

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Last week the International Food Information Council Foundation (IFIC) released its 2014 IFIC Foundation Food & Health Survey that provides insights from Americans on important food safety, nutrition and health-related topics. The 9^th annual survey examined how Americans view their own diets, their efforts to improve them, how they balance diet and exercise, their knowledge of food ingredients and components, their beliefs when it comes to food safety, and their behaviors across all of these fronts.

One of the most important findings was while taste and price consistently have been the top two factors that impact consumers’ food and beverage purchases, healthfulness in 2014 almost entirely closed the gap with price, rising from 61 percent of consumers in 2012 to 71 percent in 2014. In fact, consumers aged 18 to 34 years, who cite healthfulness as a driver of food and beverage purchases, increased from 55 percent in 2013 to 66 percent in 2014, significantly narrowing the gap with other age groups.

As consumers increasingly seek products that are healthy, safe, effective and sustainable, food and beverage formulators and marketers are charged with the task to differentiate their products and it all begins with ingredients. Yet, finding the latest information about new ingredients and their applications can be daunting. But we have the solution.

Ingredient Marketplace will take place June 2-3 in New York City and connects ingredient buyers and sellers to streamline the process for finding new ingredients and launching products. The food and beverage participation at the show continues to grow; from 2012 to 2013 there was an 89 percent increase in food and beverage individuals in attendance.

This year’s featured speaker is Gregory Jaffe, director, biotechnology project, Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), who will present “Biotechnology and the Future of the Ingredient Supply Chain." (Check out an exclusive preview of his presentation here.)

Taking place right in the Expo Hall, you will find the Ingredient Marketplace Trends In stage that delivers critical market information across nine hot ingredient categories. These 30-minute “Trends In …" presentations spotlight hot ingredient categories like Trends In Proteins, Trends In Sweeteners, Trends In Probiotics, Trends In Omega-3s, Trends in Antioxidants and more. These presentations will help formulators and marketers that are looking for ways to differentiate their products.

Also taking place at the Trends In stage is a new Ingredients IQ, an interactive, Jeopardy-style game that tests the knowledge of our industry professionals. This fun event is a must-see for attendees.

And finally, we know searching for the next innovative ingredient can be exhausting, so stop by the Drinks On Us Reception on the Expo Hall floor sponsored by Rochem International. It’s a great way to network with other attendees and, even better, it is included in the Marketplace Pass.

We hope to see you in the Big Apple next month. And remember, What’s Inside Matters when it comes to consumers’ food and beverage choices.

PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT: Seeing the Light: Holographic Chocolate

Seeing the Light: Holographic Chocolate

Lynn Kuntz

May 15, 2014 - Blogs

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Every once in a while I see some technology that stops me cold and makes me mentally exclaim: “Wow!" This week—and it may take top prize for the year—is holographic chocolates that depend on nothing more than chocolate, molding technology and the properties of light.

Really, how cool is that?

My knowledge of the properties of light pretty much starts and ends with using refractometers to measure soluble solids and admiring the effects of crystals, prisms and raindrops. So instead of fumbling the physics, I’ll let Veronica Savu, CEO of Morphotonix, the Swiss company that invented the holographic chocolate technology describe it:
“The effect is light diffraction, just like you see on a CD in the sun," Savu explained. “It is due to the fact that the surface of the material (in this case chocolate) has a controlled roughness at the micrometer scale. This comes from molding the chocolate into molds with controlled roughness. This controlled roughness could be for example grooves between 1 to 10 micrometers wide. Although the grain size of chocolate is between 20 to 30 micrometers, it still molds inside these grooves pretty well, depending on the chocolate and processing. So we do not use printing, it is pure standard chocolate molding into molds which have very small features. What we do is actually making these features into the metallic mastermold form which the plastic molds are replicated… The effect is similar to the effect on the wings of a morpho butterfly, which is due not only to pigment, but to the shape of the wings at the microscale."

So I asked Savu: Why chocolate? Besides the Swiss connection and all? Not only is chocolate delicious, apparently it just happens to possess the right qualities, she said: “The processing (molding) does not involve anything new or different from the standard. It could be used on other foods, as long as the grain size lends itself to molding in such small grooves."

There you have it, the intersection of food science and physics—or what happens when engineers play with their food. And it’s a fine example of the complexity that is food science.

Then she posed a question to me—what other foods could work given those parameters? She suggested tofu, I thought perhaps cheese or a molded gelatin or some other sort of hydrocolloid. Other types of candy, maybe some sort of confectionery flake?  An edible film that might replace those annoying stickers on fresh product? (Remember patent lawyers; you heard it here first.) Frozen foods would probably work, but melt too quickly to be practical. I hear open innovation is quite the thing these days. So here’s a puzzle for all the food scientists that deal with the microstructure of foods: What foods might fit the particle size constraints, mold cleanly and maintain the proper shape?

Not that I’m geeking out or anything…but seriously, how cool is this?