Ferré & Consulting Blog (English Version)

Caravan Ingredients has developed a new ingredient system that can produce English muffins with as few as 85 calories without impacting volume or eating quality, the company claims.

Caravan’s new CI LT English Muffin 5 is a combination of starches, gums, strengtheners and conditioners, and is intended to take advantage of consumers’ interest in lower calorie products. According to a consumer survey from the International Food Information Council, calories are one of the top items that people check on Nutrition Facts panels when deciding whether to purchase a product, with 74 percent of consumers saying that they check.

Manager of bakery applications at Caravan Ingredients Jesse Weilert told FoodNavigator-USA that English muffins are usually already relatively low in calories and low in fat, with flour being the leading contributor of calories. Therefore, the main way in which manufacturers can cut calories in English muffins is to replace some of the flour.

“With a big push for health and wellness and nutrition, English muffins are a big breakfast item,” Weilert said. “A lot of breakfast items tend to be high in calories.

We also wanted to give them some other benefits, such as high fiber content.”

He explained that in order to produce an 80 or 90 calorie muffin, a manufacturer would need to take out about 30 to 40 percent of the flour in a formulation, which means that a lot of the strengthening components of flour would be lost. In order to tackle this, Caravan’s new ingredient system would be used at a level of five percent of the volume of flour and, in order to replace the remainder, the company recommends particular fibers and other elements, such as enzymes and malted flour.

“Our product is the engine,” he said.

Weilert added that the positioning of reduced calorie English muffins would most likely be a more premium-end product, because flour replacement would be expected to increase the overall ingredient cost.

“Obviously, as a baker, flour is one of your cheapest components, so it will have an impact of price,” he said. “The end user needs to have an avenue for this style of products – someone who is willing to pay a little bit more for a low calorie, high fiber product.”

Weilert said that the company is confident that there is a strong market for this kind of product, and while the new ingredient mix is what he calls a more ‘traditional’ formulation, including ingredients such as datum and calcium propionate, in the future he sees opportunities for creating a clean label version.

Source: Food Navigator USA

Ingredients Caravan Ingredients, muffins

Replacing some of the original fat in muffins with soluble cocoa fibre could help manufacturers boost the health profile of their products, says a new Spanish study.

The study led by Susana Fiszman from the Instituto de Agroquímica y Tecnología de Alimentos (CSIC) indicates that “soluble cocoa fibre is an encouraging option for replacing oil in a chocolate muffin formulation.”

Growing Trend

Consumers take a great interest in food ingredients, and highly value products that are healthy or are seen to be making efforts to improve nutritional value.

The idea of replacing ingredients with healthier alternatives is not new, with previous research including assessing the potential for replacing flour with fiber in bakery products, as well as replacing wheat flour with resistant starch in biscuits .

The new study aimed to consider the effects of reducing a chocolate muffin’s fat content by replacing part of the oil ingredient (25, 50 and 75 per cent) with soluble cocoa fibre.

Fiszman and her team then measured the texture, composition, appearance, and colour of the muffins, and also performed a descriptive sensory analysis to compare the muffins flavour and texture.

Results

The study shows the addition of soluble cocoa fibre as a fat replacer gives muffins a more tender and crumbly feel, with a more compact and less aerated crumb.

Only muffins with 75 per cent fat replacement were found to be significantly smaller than the control samples, with the researchers suggesting that the loss in size could reflect an imbalance in formulation, recommending that this may be rectified with further investigation.

Fat replacement muffins were also found to have a lower staling rate, with the hardness of the control tripling over 28 days whilst much lower values were seen in the soluble cocoa fibre samples.

The study reveals several advantages to adding soluble cocoa fibre to muffins, such as higher moisture, a more tender and crumbly texture, and reduced the signs of hardening during storage.

However the study outlines points that need to be improved on, such as the loss of height (size), perception of bitter taste, and increased surface stickiness.

“A study to attempt to correct the height by reformulating the leavening agent or beating the egg whites more before adding them to the batter and to correct the lack of a typical chocolate flavour and colour by adding a small quantity of cocoa to all the formulations would make it possible to conduct a wide-ranging consumer acceptance study with information on the very considerable fat reduction and high fibre content of the new products,” stated the researchers.

Source: LWT – Food Science and Technology

Published online ahead of print, doi: 10.1016/j.lwt.2010.06.035

“Cocoa fibre and its application as a fat replacer in chocolate muffins”

Authors: S. Martínez-Cervera, A. Salvador, B. Muguerza, L. Moulay, S.M. Fiszman.

Research cocoa fibre, Fat replacement, muffins