Innovation in cultured foods
02 Apr 2018 | Fonterra Research
NutritionInsight spoke to Rutherford, Principal Research Technologist in the cultured foods team at the Fonterra Research and Development Center, about Fonterra’s cultured dairy products and accompanying trends. “We are seeing trends around protein and clean label. Consumers want to have short ingredients lists and not see long ingredients lists. Also the growth of authentic whole foods and naturally functional foods, like good probiotics and good bacteria.” Also, Fonterra are focused on bringing great flavor to dairy protein products, “High protein products can have some off-flavors associated with them, so we look to develop developing milder flavors, we want to go as high as possible with protein without have any flavor or texture issues.”
OK, this is Lisa Gunn at the Fonterra Research and Development Center, and I'm joined here by Lisa Rutherford, who is a principal research technologist, and Lisa works especially within the cultured foods, space.
Lisa, would you be able to run us through kind of some of the, Consumer trends and in demand you've been seeing within cultured foods.
Yes, so in the last I guess 10 years or so we're seeing a big trend around protein, so high protein yogurts such as Greek yogurts have become a lot more popular.
And we're also seeing the other trend we're seeing is clean label.
So, consumers want to have short ingredient list, they don't want to have a long list of ingredients and they want to be able to see ingredients they understand like milk proteins.
We're also seeing the growth of, authentic whole foods and and naturally functional foods.
So they, The fact that they have probiotics and and good bacteria is, is also a good selling point for the yogurts as.
OK.
And here at your in your work at the Fonterra Research and Development Center, could you talk us a bit through, the way you maybe come up with new concepts and, cultured goods, cultured foods, with high protein content.
I guess, we're very lucky here at the Fonterra FRDC because we have a long history of development of milk protein concentrates and whey protein concentrates.
So we've been working on them since the 70s and 80s.
So we have a huge range of ingredients.
That can be used in these systems and we can also manipulate them to give different textures and flavors.
So when, we have a customer that comes to us with a request for a specific ingredient, we have a, a long history of knowledge in this area to help them.
And what are some of the sort of sensorial aspects you've been seeing growing in popularity and maybe in which areas, so yeah, in the sensory aspects, so particularly for high protein products, they tend to have, they can have some.
Off flavors associated with them, perhaps protein type flavors, so we are looking at developing new ingredients that have milder flavors and to reduce some of those flavors that are associated with high protein products.
Great.
And you already mentioned clean label and sort of the natural feel of products, which of course are huge trends.
How can NZMP help, its customers in those aspects?
So the clean label one is, for us because we can use our protein ingredients to create the texture so you don't need to use hydrocolloids, so particularly in the cultured products area, so ideally for us a clean label would could have Three ingredients on it, so milk, culture and milk protein.
And just by using those three ingredients, you should be able to create anything from a drinking yogurt right through to a really thick Greek yogurt.
So, yeah, that's the beauty of the ingredients.
And of course, protein, high protein is kind of naturally associated with sports nutrition and muscle building, etc.
Do you kind of see that reflected in the products your customers are asking for or your clients are asking for?
Yes, some of them are, could be more towards that active nutrition end.
They would probably be more your drinking yogurt type products, sometimes, the thicker Greek style product is seen more as a snack than a I guess a, a sports sports food, but it is, I guess merging into that area and also what we're seeing with the high protein is that It is becoming a lot more mainstream, so, where before that you might have seen them in more sports nutrition type products, now you're seeing it in more mainstream products like yogurts and yogurt drinks.
OK.
OK, so NSMP is known to be quite forward looking in the development of its ingredients.
Would you be able to tell us a little bit about maybe future projects or or new areas you're looking into or hoping to do, hoping to improve?
So we still want to work on improving flavor in our products and also in the texture space as and I guess ideally we would like to go as high as possible in protein without having any flavor or texture issues.
So for us it's to keep going higher in that in that aspect.
OK, thank you very much.
