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“Consumer scrutiny extending beyond label & ingredients”
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Monday, 12 December, 2022, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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 Ingredion Incorporated, headquartered in the suburbs of Chicago, is a leading global ingredient solutions provider serving customers in more than 120 countries. With 2021 annual net sales of nearly $7 billion, the company turns grains, fruits, vegetables and other plant-based materials into value-added ingredient solutions for the food, beverage, animal nutrition, brewing and industrial markets. With Ingredion Idea Labs?innovation centres around the world and approximately 12,000 employees, the company co-creates with customers and fulfills its purpose of bringing the potential of people, nature and technology together to make life better. Charlotte Commarmond, vice-president, global marketing, Ingredion, in an email interview with Manjushree Naik throws more light on the company, its products and the emerging scenario. Excerpts:
You are a leading global ingredients solutions company. Elaborate.
We offer food and beverage manufacturers the solutions needed to create delicious, in-demand, better-for-you products. Our insights and taste, texture and sensory science experts can help manufacturers remove formulation barriers and quickly meet evolving consumer demands.
Last year, we acquired KaTech, a privately held company headquartered in Lübeck, Germany, that provides advanced texture and stabilisation solutions to the food and beverage industry. The acquisition complements our existing specialty ingredient portfolio by expanding Food Systems platform with a comprehensive suite of innovative solutions that assist food and beverage manufacturers with product formulation, ingredient functionality and technical assistance.
Nutrition, health and wellness products are trending. What are the challenges in making them?
The health and wellness trend continues to prove a key driver for consumer purchasing and consumption habits in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, with a quarter of consumers claiming to have started eating more healthily over the past 12 months, according to a recent survey conducted by us.
The challenge for food and beverage formulators is therefore to develop products that support the growing importance of a healthy lifestyle. This means that products must be great-tasting, and deliver the ideal texture and nutritional appeal, all while achieving consumer-preferred label claims such as ‘natural’, ‘no artificial ingredients / non-GMO’ and ‘reduced-sugar’.
Tell us about your reduced-sugar formulations.
PureCircle by Ingredion’s formulation expertise facilitates the development of solutions that leverage multiple steviol glycosides to bring a balanced taste for specific applications. PureCircle has also invested in new technologies to scale steviol glycosides, like Reb M, which appear in smaller quantities in the plant, to provide more options for food and beverage companies to utilise the best tasting stevia ingredients that deliver desirable products that delight consumers.
With food and beverage manufacturers under increasing pressure to formulate products that support a healthy lifestyle, it has never been more important to realise the power of the advanced formulation possibilities of today’s stevia ingredients.
You believe in delivering cleaner ingredients and simpler labels. Explain.
Clean label is now an undeniable and established trend. Across Europe, consumer confidence is growing and their scrutiny of products is extending beyond the label and ingredients, pushing and expanding the definition of clean label to include issues such as packaging, food waste and sourcing. Manufacturers must, as a result, build trust with consumers and come clean on all areas of product development.
What does this mean for manufacturers? While consumer tastes and trends move fast, clean label ingredient innovations can help make new product development quicker. We are seeing exciting developments too in new applications, including bakery and dairy alternatives, as ingredient suppliers and manufacturers step up to the rising demand for vegan and plant-based food.
New functional native starches and multi-functional flours are opening up clean label opportunities by offering the same range of functionality, such as process tolerance and texture stability, as modified variations. For instance, the neutral profile of ingredients such as Ingredion’s Novation functional native starches can build desirable textures. Giving manufacturers the same functionality as modified starches, these functional native starches can be used at high dosages in taste-sensitive applications as they do not mask the original flavour.
Tell us about your plant-based proteins portfolio.
Our range of pulse proteins enable manufacturers to create exciting new snacks that are highly nutritious and protein-enriched. Vitessence Pulse is a range of pea proteins, great for formulations with a balanced nutrition positioning. The range provides a higher protein content compared to protein concentrates and enable a ‘high protein’ front-of-pack claim without compromising on taste and shelf-life stability.
Our Homecraft Pulse flours are made from faba bean, chickpea, lentil or pea. Containing around twice as much protein as cereal grains, these pulse-based flours provide a way for manufacturers to meet the continuing trend for nutritious, protein-enriched food products.
Tell us about your bakery, dairy, beverage and plant-based meat alternatives solutions.
Erysta Erythritol is one of our sugar-reduction solutions that is perfect for use in baked goods. Erysta Erythritol, for example, has zero calories according to EU Regulation, around 70% sweetness compared to sugar, and supports functional build back to help formulations maintain functional properties, texture and sensory appeal. That’s essential to deliver indulgent sweet baked goods that also appeal to health-conscious consumers looking to cut back on sugar.
Apart from plant-based solutions, which are the emerging trends in the food and beverage space worldwide?
Part of addressing today’s health and wellness trend means addressing the sugar reduction challenge, in order to meet consumer demand for reduced and no added sugar. Label-friendly stevia, which is used in the recipes of over 30,000 products, is becoming ubiquitous to the new product formulations of food and beverage manufacturers committed to reducing sugar. What’s more, the growth in consumer attitudes towards stevia as one of the most preferred sugar replacements and sweeteners continues to climb.
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