Ferré & Consulting Blog (English Version)

Potassium bicarbonate

A UK firm is hoping to take the US market by storm with a novel solution to sodium reduction that transforms potassium bicarbonate into a viable alternative to sodium bicarbonate and helps bakers slash sodium by 50 percent.

Standard potassium bicarbonate is not much use as a replacement for baking soda in products such as biscuits, pound cake and hotplate products because the particles are too large, Kudos Blends technical director Dinnie Jordan.

“It’s like granulated sugar, and it won’t dissolve fast enough, which means it doesn’t release the available carbon dioxide in baked products and you are left with products that don’t rise properly with unsightly spotting: dark spots of undissolved particles.”

However, if you try to address the problem by grinding potassium bicarbonate down to reduce its particle size, it becomes too hygroscopic and sticks together, making it useless for industrial bakers, said Jordan.

To tackle the problem, Kudos Blends – a baking powder specialist based in Worcestershire, UK – has developed a patented process that produces tiny, free-flowing particles of potassium bicarbonate that have the same functionality as sodium bicarbonate – but without the sodium, or the unsightly spots, said Jordan.

US market offers huge potential for sodium reduction products

The product had been so successful that 50% of Kudos’ business was now in low sodium solutions, said Jordan. And the market potential in the US was clear. “The US is very analogous to the UK in terms of the kinds of products that benefit most from this product, and the growing demand to reduce sodium.”

The latest generation of the product – released in the UK last month – will be launched in the US in June at IFT, she said. “We’ve just sold our first few pallets to the US, but the big push will be at IFT.”

Importantly, manufacturers using the microscopic potassium bicarbonate did not have to change the way they worked to achieve significant sodium reductions in products such as pancakes, waffles and biscuits, she said.

“You can replace sodium bicarbonate in a recipe 1:1 with our potassium bicarbonate without having to change your recipe or your processes and bake times, and achieve a 50 percent sodium reduction.”

Typically products would still contain some sodium from other ingredients such as added salt or leavening agents such as sodium acid pyrophosphate (SAPP), she explained. “Some companies say leave the sodium bicarbonate, but take out the [sodium-containing] phosphates instead, but that is much more challenging.

“It’s the phosphates such as SAPP that govern the speed of the carbon dioxide release and give you other benefits.”

Source: Food navigator usa

Ingredients potassium bicarbonate, Sodium reduction

A product’s sales volume will affect how much emphasis Kraft Foods Inc. places on reducing the product’s sodium content, said Richard Black, vice-president of global nutrition. For example, reducing sodium content by 15 mg in a product with 100 million lbs in annual sales would have more overall impact than by reducing sodium content by 200 mg in a product with 3 million lbs in annual sales.

Black spoke 19 July in a session titled “Sodium in Foods, Striking the Right Balance” at IFT 10, the Institute of Food Technologists’ annual meeting and food exposition in Chicago. The session drew about 350 people with some sitting against the wall because all the chairs were taken.

Kraft Foods, Northfield, Illinois, USA, has a goal over the next two years of reducing sodium content by an average of 10% across its entire portfolio. Because of the company’s emphasis on sales volume, some foods will experience a greater reduction than 10%.

Kraft Foods will seek cost reduction in other areas to balance out increasing ingredient costs associated with sodium reduction, Black said. Salt may cost 9c to 12c a lb while ingredients that replace salt are higher. A Kraft salt replacer costs about US$1.20 per lb, Black said.

“Now you see the challenge we have,” he said.

Black gave hypothetical examples about the potential costs of reducing sodium in Kraft products. Using figures that were for illustrative purposes and not based on actual data, Black said a 25% sodium reduction in Ritz crackers hypothetically may require additional ingredient costs of about US$1 million per year. Additional charges of about $300,000 per year hypothetically could come in such areas as product development, warehouse and labeling.

Since Kraft has about 3,500 products, sodium-reduction costs hypothetically could exceed $1 billion per year, Black said.

“This is not an excuse,” he said. “We have to be able to solve this problem. We will be held accountable. We should be held accountable.”

Sodium reduction will present different problems for different products. If sodium content is reduced by 50% in ranch dressing, consumers may not detect it as less salty, Black said.

“But it tastes like Miracle Whip,” he said. “It’s not always a salty thing you’re doing.”

Formulators must consider texture and yield when reducing sodium content.

“If you reduce sodium in a hot dog too far, it literally turns to mush,” Black said. “There’s a level below which you cannot go and still have a hot dog. The same is true for cheese.”

Sodium also is in alkalizing agents in cocoa, he said. Whenever Kraft adds cocoa to its cookies, the company needs to work with its cocoa suppliers to reduce sodium content in cocoa ahead of time, or before Kraft starts working with it.

Companies Kraft, Sodium reduction