Ferré & Consulting Blog (English Version)

Increased consumer awareness of the potential health benefits of vitamin D is opening up opportunities in fortification, according to results of a new survey.

The proportion of American consumers believe that vitamin D plays a great role in maintaining or improving their health has increased to 44 percent, up from 37 percent last year, according to a US survey conducted by Angus Reid Strategies for Lallemand.

But while consumers may be more aware of the benefits, their interest for vitamin D-rich foods appears to focus on bread that naturally rich in vitamins (56 percent) than fortified bread (6 percent).

Vitamin D refers to two biologically inactive precursors – D3, also known as cholecalciferol, and D2, also known as ergocalciferol. The former is produced in the skin on exposure to UVB radiation (290 to 320 nm). The latter is derived from plants and only enters the body via the diet.

Both D3 and D2 precursors are hydroxylated in the liver and kidneys to form 25- hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D), the non-active ‘storage’ form, and 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D (1,25(OH)2D), the biologically active form that is tightly controlled by the body.

While our bodies do manufacture vitamin D on exposure to sunshine, the levels in some northern countries are so weak during the winter months that our body makes no vitamin D at all, meaning that dietary supplements and fortified foods are seen by many as the best way to boost intakes of vitamin D.

One such option is bread, being a staple of many cultures. Jean Chagnon, CEO of Lallemand, supplier of vitamin D-rich bakers’ yeast, pointed to recent findings from Professor Christel Lamberg-Allardt from Helsinki University that found that bread baked with a baker’s yeast containing vitamin D2 maintained blood levels of the vitamin to approximately the same extent as a D2 supplement over a four-week period.

“Bakers using our yeast therefore have a head start in helping meet this important dietary requirement,” said Chagnon. “In addition, we expect to receive soon a positive response to our FDA petition aiming to amend the current regulations to allow levels of up to 400 IU of vitamin D per 100 grams of baked foods using our yeast.

“This will provide bakers with an even greater opportunity to respond to the growing consumer awareness of vitamin D’s benefits, allow bread to naturally become the primary dietary source of vitamin D (perhaps ahead of milk) and strengthen bread’s healthy attributes,” he said.

Other findings from the survey included the findings that the most common vitamin D-rich food source is milk (74 percent), followed by yogurt (40 percent), orange juice (21 percent) and cereals (18 percent). However, only 10 percent of the respondents perceived bread as a source of vitamin D.

Bakery, Ingredients Bakery, Vitamin D, yeast

Enrichment of bread flour with large particle dietary fibres may lead to low GI breads, according to researchers.

The study, published in LWT – Food Science and Technology, suggests using a ten per cent replacement of larger particle, high viscoelastic, dietary fibres (DFs) may result in breads with lower GI values, and good physical and sensory properties.

“Basic investigations of the physicochemical properties of dietary fibres and their implications on food specific functional properties are crucial to exploit the added value of DFs as both a key nutritional factor and a functional ingredient in foods,” wrote the researchers, led by Dr. Concha Collar, from the Institute of Agrochemistry and Food Technology (CSIC), in Spain.

Nutritional factor

Dietary fibres are a key nutritional factor in a healthy diet, and are recognised for their beneficial physiological effects such as reducing the digestive absorption of glucose and cholesterol.

Viscous DFs – polysaccharides such as gums, pectin, psyllium, and beta-glucans – have been associated with slower gastric emptying, extended transit time through the small intestine, and modifying starch digestion – consequently altering the Glycaemic Index (GI) of starch-based foods.

Careful selection of DFs with suitable physico-chemical properties is an important factor in bread-making applications, noted the authors

The new study investigates DFs effects on bread technological functional and nutritional properties in order to better understand the effects of substitution.

Functional properties

Researchers reported that few technological or functional properties were found to depend on dietary fibre characteristics, whilst most nutritional bread properties were affected by DFs molecular characteristics, complex viscosity, and solvent retention capacity.

Dietary fibres with larger particle size resulted in “highly sensory acceptable breads with higher amounts of resistant starch and slightly lower protein digestibility,” according to the researchers.

They reported DFs with a high viscoelastic profile and complex viscosity produced breads with better sensory perception, and lower digestible starch, resulting in lower GI values and reduced protein digestibility.

Strict link

The researchers concluded the structural make up of dietary fibre, and the physiological and technological functional properties of food matrix are “strictly linked together”.

“In bread making applications, a careful selection of DFs with suitable physicochemical properties preventing permanent disruption of the protein matrix is a pre-requisite to obtain sensorially accepted breads in highly substituted flour systems,” they wrote

“The development of … dietary fibre-rich cereal products exhibiting nutritional added value, safety, tasty palatability, convenience and easy handling during processing, closely depend on the proper knowledge of the physico-chemical properties of the polymeric DFs,” concluded the researchers

Source: LWT – Food Science and Technology

Bakery, Research bread flour, fibre, GI breads

The nutrition labelling landscape is constantly evolving, and although final decisions on various global regulations are unlikely to be made over the next year, food manufacturers need to strategize for a number of potential outcomes, according to a new report.

The Future of Nutrition Labelling for Food and Drinks in Europe was published by Business Insights last month to provide an overview of the nutrition labelling options being considered internationally.

“Front-of-pack (FOP) nutrition labeling regulations will have a huge impact on the marketing of healthy food and drink. The rules about what you can and cannot claim will change. For brands that are built around a specific claim, this will mean changing the entire brand strategy, not just the packaging and marketing approach,” writes the analyst.

?”Companies need to be more forward-thinking and ready to react to FOP regulatory change as soon as it becomes effective will be the most successful over the next two to three years.”

Highlighting nutrients

National dietary guidelines around the world have largely focused on highlighting four nutrients, recommending moderate consumption of these: fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt.

However, the way in which this information should be presented has long been an area of contention, with one of the biggest criticisms of voluntary labeling schemes being that they create consumer confusion.

The report highlights findings from the European Consumers’ Association (BEUC; Bureau Européen des Unions de Consommateurs), which reveal that a system of colour-coding on the front of processed food packaging is best understood by consumers.

This kind of system would use red, amber and green ‘traffic lights’ to concisely display whether the key nutrients of fat, saturated fats, sugars and salt are high, medium or low.

Taking the lead?

However, the analyst highlights that at the end of March 2010, the European Parliament Environment Committee decided against making the use of a traffic light system mandatory, and that EU member states may adopt their own national rules.

“It therefore seems likely that manufacturers will take the lead in selecting the (…) national rules,” writes Business Insight.

“Sweden’s Keyhole FOP labelling system is frequently cited as a best-practice example that has stood the test of time in the global debate. First established in Sweden in 1989, it became accepted as a Nordic label for healthier food and drink in Denmark, Sweden and Norway on June 17, 2009.”

packaging nutrition labelling

Unilever said its deal with leading supplier, Unimills, for segregated certified sustainable palm oil represents a small start for the Dutch food and personal care group but takes the company in the right direction in terms of its 2015 total palm oil usage sourcing pledge.

Gavin Neath, senior vice president of sustainability at Unilever said the company was not willing to disclose the precise volumes of segregated palm oil that the food group was sourcing from Unimills but he stressed that Unilever was now ahead of its plan to derive all of its palm oil from Rountable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) certified plantations within a five year timeframe.

He told this publication that this goal was achievable, particularly now as agricommodity giants Cargill along with Unimills and another leading supplier, IOI, have been landing segregated certified sustainable palm oil (CSPO) in Rotterdam.

“We expect an acceleration in the quantities of CSPO coming onto the market, as these companies now recognise the industry demand for this form of the ingredient,” added Neath.

Unimills sources the CSPO for Unilever from its parent company, Sime Darby, whose plantations in Malaysia are RSPO backed.

The CSPO is processed into specialty fats that are then sent to Unilever for use in its food or personal care range.

Neath said that a great percentage of the snack, margarine and soup mix manufacturer’s products contained the oil, but he would not be drawn on exact figures. Industry experts estimate that around one third of all food and personal care items sold in supermarkets contain the controversial ingredient.

There are serious concerns about the effect of the palm oil industry on the environment, as intensive plantations have cleared habitats for endangered species like tigers and orangutans in South Asia, while also adding to carbon emissions.

When asked by this publication if Unilever had a strategy in place to reformulate its products to allow for a reduction in the amount of palm oil used by the company, Neath stressed that the ingredient offered unmatched cost efficiencies compared to other vegetable oils and the food group was intent on continuing to use it.

“Palm oil can be six to ten times more productive than sunflower oil, and if it is cultivated correctly it can be a sustainable crop. That is what we, and our partners in the RSPO, are working towards,” he explained.

The RSPO was set up in 2004 to promote sustainable palm oil use – and changing to palm oil that is sustainable or supports green palm certification has become a major trend for food manufacturers and retailers.

UK advocates Sustain said that it is good news that multinationals have at last started to acknowledge that some palm oil production is the result of rainforest devastation but Greenpeace and others have raised concerns that the RSPO mark is not yet a guarantee that palm oil will have come from a truly sustainable source.

According to Neath, the RSPO, of which Unilever is a founding member, makes every effort to ensure that it can stand over its certification of a palm oil producer as sustainable, but he concurs that there is an element of truth in the NGOs’ view of the organisation as not being as efficient as it could be.

However, he said that, currently it is the only institution of its type that exists and it is beholden on Unilever and its partners to make the RSPO more rigorous.

“It takes a while for a strong infrastructure to be built up in an organisation such as this,” argues Neath. “It is important to remember that it was only the back end of 2008 that the RSPO was able to certify the first batch of CSPO. Now it is certifiying segregated sustainable palm oil in the region of two million tonnes,” he continued.

Sime Darby acting president and group CEO, Dato Mohd Bakke, said that to date 15 of its strategic operating units have been awarded the RSPO certification, and that these have the capacity to produce over 500,000 tonnes of CSPO.

Source: Bakery and Snacks

Companies, Ingredients segregated palm oil, Unilever, Unimills

Manufacturers of pies and pasties in the UK may need to find ways to make the products healthier if sales growth is to be sustained once purse strings loosen, according to Mintel.

The nation’s market for these products was valued at £941m in 2009, up almost 4 per cent in value sales from the year earlier. However, in real terms, with the effects of inflation taken into account, value sales have fallen by 1.2 per cent over the period.

Growth in the category has been largely down to the convenience and price factors it offers consumers. And although growth is forecast to continue through 2012, Mintel warns that manufacturers may have to re-evaluate their products in order to keep hold of some consumers.

“One of the longer-term challenges that the pies and pasty category will face, is whether consumers will stick to the category when the economy improves, and they have more disposable income. Pies and pasties offer consumers a low-cost meal that is convenient but does not tick the healthy eating box,” writes Mintel in Pies and Pasties UK 2010.

The category includes pastry products with a filling, which could be meat or vegetable, for example pork pies, sausage rolls, pasties, slices, beef Wellington, and chicken pies. The products can be sold hot ready to eat, cold ready to eat, chilled ready to cook or frozen ready to cook, or canned.

One of the drivers behind the increased sales in recent years was the tightened economy and rising food prices, which pushed consumers to look for value for money combined with comfort food, said Mintel.

“While the economic downturn is currently putting pressures on finances, with consumers prioritising their financial situation over health, when the economy does recover consumers are likely to shift their priorities refocussing on health,” said Vivianne Ihekweazu, a senior food and drink analyst at Mintel.

“For future growth to stay strong, manufacturers will also need to reformulate their pie and pasty ranges, making them healthier, with the use of natural ingredients.”

Category performance

Although pies and pasties are not products that are consumed frequently, around 84 per cent of UK consumers say they have eaten a pie or pasty in the past 12 months. The most popular products currently rank as beef pies, followed by sausage roll and Cornish pasties.

Between 2009 and 2010, value sales of pies and pasties are set to increase by 2.2 per cent, according to the report.

The market is forecast grow by a further 17 per cent over the next five years to reach £1,123m by 2017.

“However, the state of the economy will have a significant effect on the future well-being of the market,” said Mintel.

Pastry manufacturers, pasties, pies