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Tate & Lyle finds the balance between nutrition and taste

Source:Ringier Food Release Date:2017-12-20 418
Food & Beverage
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Tate & Lyle continues to develop innovative ingredients to meet market needs

Tate & Lyle, a UK-based global provider of ingredients and solutions to the food and beverage industries, is pursuing clean label more aggressively as it places more emphasis on ensuring balance between health and taste.

The company agrees there is a continuing strong trend for natural sweetening solutions that reduce sugar and calories, especially in light of rising obesity rates the world over. With global numbers pointing to about 2.1 billion people being obese, consumers are becoming increasingly aware about the need to replace sugar. More countries are putting measures in place to address rising obesity, diabetes and related illnesses as reflected by legislations taxing sugar.

Harry Boot, senior vice president and general manager for the Tate & Lyle’s Speciality Food Ingredients business in Asia Pacific, noted the tremendous industry momentum for sugar replacement and clean label.

“We look at all these big trends and ask: What can we do? So this is why we keep on developing new products. We’ve clearly got a mission,” Boot shared.

Functional clean label starches

Tate & Lyle has recently expanded its line of Claria® functional clean label starches with the Claria® Instant 340 and 360. These two new instant starch products are versatile enough to address the different formulation requirements of varied applications and processes.

The Claria® Instant solutions are suitable for use in salad dressings, instant gravies and soups, and pastry fillings and creams. Developed to enable food manufacturers to meet consumer demands for clean labels without compromising taste, texture, colour and performance, these starch products feature process tolerance to suit different temperatures, acidity and shear, harsh processing conditions.

Claria® Instant has strong bake stability, similar to chemical modified starch. The product also has immediate viscosity in high-solids systems such as fruit fillings. It can build texture easily even in cold-process applications, making it ideal for salad dressings.

The Claria® Instant products are designed to deliver a clean taste and neutral color. They are non-GMO and display sensory attributes similar to those of traditional modified food starch.

Functional starches under the Claria® brand meet various formulation requirements

Functional starches under the Claria® brand make it easy for customers to formulate yogurt and other products to meet particular sensory characteristics. They also feature process tolerance to suit different temperatures, acidity and shear, harsh processing conditions (Dreamstime Stock Photos)

Balance of sweetness and health

People all over the world are trying to consume less sugar and calories, but most still make purchase decisions based on taste. That means there's major value in products that don't feel like a compromise.

Food and beverage (F&B) manufacturers are responding to consumer desires by removing sugars and reducing calories in their products. Selecting an alternative sweetening solution that appeals to consumers is just one piece of the puzzle, however, replacing sugars is rarely a one-to-one exchange, and it can have unintended consequences on the experience (taste, appearance and texture/mouthfeel) of a product.

High-potency sweeteners such as stevia can be used to reduce calories and sugar while delivering great taste. Stevia, a plant-extracted sweetener, contributes zero calories, does not raise blood sugar levels and is 200 to 300 times sweeter than sugar. That means stevia sweeteners can achieve the same sweetness level as sugar by using only a tiny amount, and can prove a great solution for F&B manufacturers looking to offer products with "clean label" claims. The new stevia options help manufacturers meet growing global demand for healthier food and beverages with natural ingredients, fewer calories and less sugar.

In 2017, Tate & Lyle partnered with Sweet Green Fields(SGF), a global leader in natural, healthful sweetener solutions. This exclusive distribution agreement allows Tate & Lyle to provide its customers with access to SGF’s exceptional line of stevia-based ingredients and solution. Through this partnership, the two companies can provide the market with a toolbox of synergistic sweeteners to address the growing global demand for healthful ingredients that offer highly nutritive value, but still have exceptional taste.

Studies have shown that different stevia sweeteners have certain concentration thresholds above which they start to taste bitter. In early product iterations, many manufacturers unknowingly exceeded these thresholds, offending the taste buds of a portion of the population that is sensitive to the bitter off-notes of lower-cost stevia products.

The latest stevia innovations deliver a simple sweetness with no bitter aftertaste, even at higher levels of sugar replacement. In the quest for reduced-bitterness formulations, food scientists at Sweet Green Fields and Tate & Lyle focused on taste qualities of various steviol glycosides found in stevia leaf extracts. They identified that specific compositions of steviol glycosides imparted a better taste and sweetness quality than Reb A and SG95 products.

This finding led to the development of the Optimizer® and Dual® stevia product lines, which deliver clean, smooth sweetness and can be used to achieve higher levels of sugar replacement. These products minimize stevia’s bitter aftertaste many consumers report experiencing, making stevia-sweetened products acceptable to a larger number of consumers.

The Optimizer® and Dual product lines eliminates a need for expensive taste modifiers or co-sweeteners, saving up to 20% in costs of the sweetener system (at 50% sugar replacement) while broadening appeal.

“SGF is a great partner for us. They’re very strong in the areas of seed development and leaf development, and are really nicely backward integrated. Their portfolio complements our product range and together we provide manufacturers with a toolbox of synergistic sweeteners to create great tasting clean label products.” said Mr Boot.

With partner Sweet Green Fields, Tate & Lyle is poised to meet demand for stevia products (Dreamstime Stock Photos)

With partner Sweet Green Fields, Tate & Lyle is poised to meet customer demand for stevia products (Dreamstime Stock Photos)

Strengthening application development, other capabilities

Part of the company’s long-term plan to offer innovative ingredients and solutions is to fortify its application development expertise. As such, Tate & Lyle continues to invest in this area, in particular boosting the size of its application lab centre in Singapore.

“Our Singapore lab supports the Asia Pacific region and so we are doubling our capacity there. We will also be doubling the size of our lab in Shanghai. These are all to make sure that we increase the support we can give  our customers, so we can keep growing and winning together. A lot of our customers from ASEAN and other parts of the region come to Singapore and then we work together to find solutions for their requirements,” said Mr Boot.

“Tate & Lyle will also continue offering solutions to meet diverse market demands.” Mr Boot added, “We’re not talking about just one or two products. Our texturants product portfolio alone is pretty vast. The same applies to the sweetness portfolio. We remain one of the largest manufacturers with one of the largest portfolio of products. We believe that it’s typically solutions that you bring to your customers, not one product. This is why we will continue to develop a lot of solutions.”

To meet its goal of total capability solution, Tate & Lyle is also strengthening its technology capability, customer service and other areas of operations and expertise.

Outlook for 2018

Ingredients and solutions from Tate & Lyle, combined with the deep technical expertise of its people, will continue to help it address customer needs in key categories such as beverages, dairy, and soups, sauces and dressings.

Tate & Lyle, tailors its solutions to target markets. “We’ll keep on developing products to meet the needs of our key categories. But, of course, we can grow specific products and categories depending on which area a customer is in. For example, if there’s a bakery sector in China that we can tap into, specifically snacks segments, we can grow in those sectors,” Mr Boot said.

The company is also exploring potential combinations such as stevia with other types of sweeteners in collaboration with customers and partners. With the stevia market in Asia remaining robust, Tate & Lyle expects bullish about growing its stevia portfolio.

Texturizers will also be a product development focus area. Tate & Lyle has introduced this year a clean label functional starch that is very similar in texture and sensory profile to a chemical modified starch. It is similar in color, with some customers saying it offers better mouthfeel and texture than previous versions.

The clean label space is definitely an area of growth for Tate & Lyle. “We’ve engaged with customers who are encouraged by the functionality experienced from using clean label functional starch. Tate &Lyle has achieved very positive momentum in this portfolio, which is why we are expanding our capacity in clean label functional starch and other related products,” shared Mr Boot. 

Tate & Lyle has reviewed the existing portfolio into the batter and breading industry, identifying how its product portfolio can be used in this sector.  This enabled introducing some solutions that leverage its full product portfolio range whilst offering healthier options.

The company has also set its sights on introducing improvements in terms of crunchiness, crispiness, microwavability, storage and freeze or stability.  In future, clean label products for this category may not be too far off.

Mr Boot said new product solutions can be launched very quickly if these can be developed based on existing products or combinations of products. “We can do it within a month or several months depending on the complexity. If it’s developing a new molecule then it will definitely take much longer,” he added.

Tate & Lyle, which has more than a century of experience making food and ingredients solutions, continues to tap into its market knowledge, whether in starches, fibers, beverages and any other sector, to deliver what customers are looking for. But even with the relentless capability and knowledge building, the company knows the premium value in finding the balance among taste, healthfulness and cost.

Across its wide range of products from nutritive to non-nutritive sweeteners, from starches to stabilizers. Tate & Lyle aims to leverage its knowledge of how ingredients work together to provide great-tasting solutions that are also highly functional. This is the only way the company can respond to trends in specific markets and the global industry alike whilst helping its customers grow their business and guaranteeing end consumers get only the best products. 

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