Emerging formulations—the new starting lineup: achieving a successful product roster—by replacing carbohydrates with fiber or by adding nutritive ingredients—has more to do with the formulator's familiarity with the ingredients and processes than with new technology

Prepared Foods, April, 2004 by Marcia A. Wade

There could not have been a better person to formulate Eli's no-sugar-added plain cheesecakes than Diana Moles, research and development manager at Eli's Cheesecake Co. (Chicago). "I hate the taste of diet products," says Moles. She is so disturbed by aftertastes that she personally avoids diet gums, sodas and foods. Consequently, when given the mandate to formulate no-sugar-added and low-carb cheesecakes for diabetics and others who must restrict sugar intake, she had to form allegiances with those same sweeteners she had previously avoided. Recognizing that Eli's customers would feel similarly, Moles sought to retain the most important characteristics of Eli's traditional cheesecakes--taste, texture and appearance.

In the beginning, Moles experimented with many different sweeteners including sucralose, which has demonstrated success as a sugar replacer in many consumer products. However, she was not satisfied with the outcome and continued to look for a sweetener system that could provide a number of properties.

"I was looking for a good browning agent, emulsification and structure. But the main thing [I wanted] was flavor with no aftertaste." After trying a series of sweetening systems over a four-month period, Moles settled on a recipe that blended lactitol and aspartame with polydextrose. Aspartame, used for other Eli recipes, imparted the sweetness while the polydextrose, she felt, acted as a "binder" to protein.

"The cake was beautiful. It looks like the real McCoy, and it tastes like the real McCoy," says Moles. After a year of success on the market, Eli's no-sugar-added cheesecake has spawned a chocolate flavor and inspired Eli's to formulate a low-carb cheesecake that replaces carbohydrates with polydextrose and lactitol.

Food formulators are familiar with Moles' challenge, gwen that replacing, reducing and eliminating many ingredients is now in vogue among U.S. processing companies seeking to join the 'low-carb' revolution. Today's emerging formulation edicts impact a processor's ingredient choices for brand and line extensions that often go beyond low-carb or the replacement of sugar.

The current challenges facing food formulators are due to changing trends in nutrition, says K. Scott McKenzie, Ph.D., associate director of the Food Protein R&D Center at Texas A&M (College Station, Texas). The misconception formulators take into a food reformulation is that the project will be as simple as replacing one or two ingredients, the way you would switch blueberries for strawberries in a muffin recipe.

Oftentimes, when subtracting carbohydrates or increasing protein content, "manufacturers have a fundamentally new product that won't resemble the old product" states McKenzie. "They are different and physically they behave differently during processing" Most importantly to consumers, they taste differently, which is exactly why many of the low-fat products of the 80s and 90s were abandoned.

As for the excluded ingredients, such as carbohydrates that impact the character of the original product, manufacturers are trying their best to find equivalents. Some equivalents satisfy their nutritional requirements, but not the functional attributes. "Regardless of how nutritious it is, if it doesn't taste good, the consumer is not going to eat it," says Ernesto Hernandez, Ph.D., head of the fats and oils program at Texas A&M University.

A Sweet Tradeoff

Colleen Zammer, principle of food and beverage technology at Tiax LLC (Cambridge, Mass.), believes the goal is to achieve a synergistic system by obtaining the right sweetener and the right amount of sweetness, so that consumers get an initial hit of the targeted taste. "All of that should carry over into the aftertaste so that it doesn't linger around, and what you end up tasting is the good [taste]."

Aspartame is composed of two amino acids, aspartic acid and phenylalanine, and is about 150-200 times as sweet as sucrose. Unlike aspartame, the chemical structure of sucralose, which is roughly 600 times as sweet as sucrose, more closely resembles sucrose. "One of the benefits of sucralose is that it can withstand high temperatures, like the heat of baking," notes Zammer. "Aspartame cannot--it is only stable for so long before it degrades. Because of that, sucralose has a good flavor profile and a lot of versatility."

However, trends for sweetener substitutions are dependent more on blending than relying on just one sweetener. Other ingredients that achieve some of the properties of sugar are maltodextrin and also sugar alcohols, which act as humectants and are less cariogenic.

The challenge is not in finding equivalents, explains Leslie Skarra, president and owner of Merlin Development Inc. (Plymouth, Minn.), a contract food R&D company. Because each system is different, the challenge is obtaining the skill set to understand exactly what is happening in the food system. As an example, some of the functions of polyols and polydextrose are similar to sugar. Unfortunately, sugar alcohols have a laxative effect, which make them impractical for replacing large amounts of sugar. Polydextrose also can have that effect at levels above 15g per serving. "You can use more, but you have to label it as having a laxative effect," explains Zammer.