17 Mar 2023 Making healthier treats a reality
Better foods, better nutrition, better convenience, better taste, better texture, clean label, less sugar – the litany of often conflicting demands that are shaping today’s consumer trends. Carien Schoeman from Savannah Fine Chemicals discusses some headache-salving solutions to make just such healthier treats a reality.
A MILD SWEETNESS
In a perfect world baked goods will have sweetness without the spike, increase fibre intake without losing the taste and with decreased fat content but still packing flavour, be more natural and flexitarian orientated – all without compromising taste and nutritional benefits.
In the past reducing sugar in baked goods was associated with compromised taste and texture. With the advances in food technology those days are gone with products like Palatinose from Beneo and Sanacel Oat fibre from CFF.
Palatinose is a fully digestible sugar but with the unique property that it is slowly digestible with a GI of 32, meaning that it does not spike blood sugar. As it is made from sugar beet the taste is the same as cane sugar with the difference that it’s only 50% as sweet as sugar, resulting in a mild sweetness which complements all baked goods.
Utilising oat fibre to reduce sugar in baked goods like biscuits, cakes and muffins is a great way to increase the health benefits of these treats while reducing the sugar and calories at the same time, without leaving the product dense and dry.
SUGAR-FREE AND LOW-FAT BAKED GOODS
Fibre allows the production of sugar-free bakery products, with the aid of adding sweetness via a sugar alcohol like Isomalt from Beneo or high-intensity sweeteners like sucralose.
It’s a well-known fact that fat has a big contribution towards the taste, smell, texture, and mouthfeel of a product. Thus reducing fat, although the healthy option, can leave a product lacking in the flavour department.
Fat can hide in plain sight like in cocoa powder where there is on average 10-12% of fat. Thus, using Barry Callebaut’s Red-D-Light cocoa powder that has less than 1% fat makes a great way of reducing fat in chocolate baked goods. It has a wonderful, full chocolate flavour that leaves products tasting just as great as with their fuller fat counterparts.
Replacing fat in bakery fillings with inulin like Oraft GR and Orafti HP from Beneo will result in the same mouthfeel as inulin mimics fat to give a healthier but just as indulgent experience to the consumer.
NATURAL CLEAN-LABEL SOLUTIONS
In recent years the plant-based trend has moved from being nichè into mainstream, with one in four consumers globally calling themselves flexitarians. Flexitarians are driving the demand for plant-based food, and they’re especially interested in transparent labels, sustainability, health and food adventures.
Dates have been used to replace cane sugar as a natural and healthier option for years – globally, the number of products using dates has doubled since 2014.
With no refined sugars, low GI and a natural- clean-label product; date paste, date syrup and date sugar from Lucas Natural Food Trading is the perfect solution to satisfy the sweet tooth of this growing market.
Eggs and dairy are major components of the bakery industry contributing many taste and functional properties in cakes, muffins, fillings, and biscuits. Replacing these has always been a struggle. Enter REGG-EX from Kröner Stärke that can replace up to 40% of eggs in baked goods with no detrimental effect on functionality or taste.
BeneoPro FB P60 is a faba bean protein concentrate that is neutral in taste and offers great functional properties in replacing dairy in cakes and muffins.
What would the world be without chocolate? Luckily Callebaut’s has launched its great tasting NXT milk and dark plant-based chocolate. As all Callebaut chocolate, the NXT chocolates are rich in flavour and completely vegan, gluten free, dairy free and thus guiltfree. The NXT chocolate is great to use as inclusions or for decoration.
You can find all these product solutions and more at Savannah Fine Chemicals