Multitasking Ingredients

Like people, some ingredients work harder than others. The quest for greater productivity and cost efficiency in manufacturing has R&D reaching for truly multifunctional ingredients—those that can replace more than one ingredient in a formula while improving functionality, flavor and/or nutrition.

Mira-Mist 662 from Tate & Lyle, Decatur, IL, is a lipophilic (“fat-loving”) modified waxy starch that stabilizes oil-in-water emulsions. It replaces egg yolk to make longer-lasting emulsions in sauces and soups and may replace or extend gum arabic, as well.

Resistant starch also wears more than one hat. It can replace up to half of the flour in a formula, although replacing 20% to 30% is more common. This reduces calories while boosting fiber. “Oftentimes, we’re aiming for a ‘good source of fiber’ claim, which is 2.5 grams of fiber per serving, or an ‘excellent source of fiber’ claim, which is 5 grams or more of fiber per serving,” says Doris Dougherty, senior food scientist, Tate & Lyle.

Prebiotic fibers interest formulators for their health and functionality. They enhance the growth of beneficial bacteria in the small intestine, thereby improving digestive health and immunity. Soluble corn fiber, notes Dougherty, adds prebiotic and dietary fiber, some viscosity and sweetness, and may replace other ingredients for a cost savings. “We’ve used it in cheese sauces and brought up the fiber to 10 grams per serving without affecting the texture or flavor,” she says.

It can also replace maltodextrin, notes Judy Turner, advanced technical resource, Tate & Lyle. “If the viscosity is increased, a little less gum or starch may be required,” she adds.

The growing market for weight-loss products offers much opportunity for ingredients with a plurality of functions. An example is Z Trim®, a natural, noncaloric fat substitute that delivers the taste and texture of full-fat foods with significantly lower calorie and fat content, as well as higher fiber, without affecting a food’s flavor or contributing digestive side effects.

Z Trim is a natural, plant-fiber fat replacer made from the hulls of corn, oats, soy, rice and barley. It’s processed into a gel that mimics fat in food preparation. Z Trim Holdings, Inc., Mundelein, IL notes that the ingredient lowers calories from fat by 25% to 50% in most foods without affecting taste or texture.

“It is a direct dietary fiber supplement, a fat-reduction method and, in addition to that, it binds water and improves texture,” says Triveni Shukla, vice president, technology development, Z Trim Holdings, Inc. “So, you don’t have to rely on three or four other ingredients in a formulation.” She also notes that adding the ingredient to breading reduces oil absorption in fried products. In snack chips, it reduces breakage. In pizza dough, it creates a crunchier texture.

The fat replacer has excellent water-binding properties. A mixture of 96% water and 4% Z Trim “is thicker than mayonnaise,” Shukla notes, “and a 12% gel has the consistency of Crisco.”

Reducing fat without affecting flavor is a primary— but certainly not the only—reason for using Citri-Fi®, a byproduct fiber ingredient from citrus-juice manufacturing. It can replace as much as 50% of the fat in a product without affecting flavor, texture or appearance. It also offers moisture-management benefits and potentially lower costs.

“Typically, adding fiber is thought of as a way to raise the total dietary fiber level of a food formulation, but our product is functional,” says Brock Lundberg, vice president of technology, Fiberstar, Inc., Willmar, MN. He notes that Citri-Fi’s porous fibers form an extensive internal surface area that fills with water and entraps oil. The use level is low, typically 0.75% to 1.50%, “making it very cost effective,” he says.

Citri-Fi can replace gums and starches in sauces and dressings. It strengthens pie crusts, as well. Lundberg says one manufacturer reduced breakage of pie crust from 13% to 1% with the addition of just 1% Citri-Fi. Similarly, it stops cheesecakes from cracking. It binds oil in meat fillings for burritos and stops syneresis in prepared salads like coleslaw. Some chain restaurants use the ingredient to hold moisture in hamburgers, which tend to become dry after high-temperature cooking, thus extending product life and reducing waste.

Resistant maltodextrin, such as Fibersol-2 from ADM, Decatur, IL, supplements the fiber content of whole-grain foods while masking the bitter note that sometimes accompanies whole grains. It also helps maintain a soft texture in bar applications, thereby extending their shelf life. In diet beverages, it masks the characteristic aftertaste of high-intensity sweeteners that some people find unacceptable. The company notes that it can be added at nutritionally beneficial levels to beverages without compromising appearance, because it is colorless in solution.

Bakers use the powder to replace anywhere from 3% to 10% of the standard flour in bread, notes Michael Ackerman, president, PMA International, Toronto,with the best results coming at use levels of 5% to 7%. The powder also helps bread retain moisture and stay fresh longer. Pastas, like gnocchi, fusili and fettuccine, work well at 25% wine-powder content, gaining a firmer texture than standard-flour pastas, he notes.

When it comes to clean labels, heat-treated flours have an edge on chlorine-bleached flours. The former are labeled simply “wheat flour,” while the latter must wear the “bleached flour” tag, notes Kevin Bodily, research chef, technical sales, Siemer Milling Co., Teutopolis, IL. He also suggests heat-treated flours promote excellent adhesion in batters, improved product quality under heat-lamp holding, and reduced or eliminated usage of modified food starches and gums, a possible cost savings. In addition, some heat-treated flours have low microbial levels that make them suitable for raw uses, like cookie-dough inclusions in ice cream.

A more-intense flavor may also occur when heat-treated flour replaces modified food starch and gums, because there is no masking effect, Bodily says. Thus, cost savings may result from lower use levels of flavor-system ingredients, as well as other thickeners. Bodily says he knows of a company that reduced the cost of its formulations by $0.16 to $0.29 per pound by replacing starch and gums with heat-treated flour and decreasing flavor-system ingredients.

The long-term prospectus for multifunctional ingredients is bright. The need to formulate food and beverage products that are healthier, more functional and more cost-efficient is a constant in this business.

James Scarpa is a Chicago-based writer who specializes in food, beverages and the business of restaurants. He is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and a veteran of the foodservice industry trade press.

An adaptogen is a natural product that acts as a functional food or nutraceutical, eliciting nonspecific or multisystem actions beneficial to the body’s resistance to environmental stress. The adaptogenic response was researched by the Soviets in the 1940s, but has its origins in Asian and Ayurvedic medicine.

Dr. Nikolay Vasilievich Lazarev’s work on nervous system damage lead to medications he called “adaptogens,” because they created “a state of nonspecifically increased resistance.” Dr. Israel I. Brekhman and Dr. I. V. Dardymov later analyzed traditional medicinal remedies from Asia and found plant adaptogens showing medicinal benefits based a three point criteria: Adaptogens should be innocuous and cause minimal physiological disorders; an adaptogen’s action should be nonspecific, increasing resistance to adverse influences of physical, chemical and/or biological nature; and adaptogens possess normalizing actions irrespective of the direction of pathologic changes. The best candidates are members of the ginseng family, licorice, holy basil, ashwagandha, golden root, maca, mushrooms (shiitake, maitake and reishi), Rhodiola rosea, schisandra and some of the B vitamins.

FDA does not maintain data on the effectiveness or proper use of ingredients to cure or prevent diseases. Further research to authoritatively identify traditional candidates and their scope of effectiveness could lead to a more pharmacologically distinct classification. The main tasks are to understand how specific adaptogens work at the molecular level and determine whether common pathways exist.
—Michael R. Murray (mic_mur@msn.com)

The best candidates are members of the ginseng family, licorice, holy basil, ashwagandha, golden root, maca, mushrooms (shiitake, maitake and reishi), Rhodiola rosea, schisandra and some of the B vitamins.