Cooking up tempting, fat-fighting foods and ingredients

Agricultural Research, March, 2006 by Marcia Wood, Jan Suszkiw, Jim Core, Erin Peabody

From chewy, all-natural apple bars to a rice flour that helps keep excess cooking oil out of your savory fried zucchini, ARS scientists are cooking up a storm of new, obesity-fighting foods and food ingredients for you. Their investigations have yielded some compounds that might help our bodies absorb less fat or can take the place of tat in foods we sometimes crave--like chocolate-chip cookies.

Still more inventions slim down the fat content of familiar foods such as mozzarella cheese, making pizza, for example, a less calorie-laden choice. In all, their tantalizing, all-natural new foods and innovative food additives are intended to help us prevent unwanted weight gain, yet still enjoy what we eat.

What's more, these scientists help move their calorie-cutting creations from their laboratories to your local supermarkets or neighborhood restaurants--the fastfood eateries and the white-tablecloth establishments alike. They do that by teaming up with specialists--chefs, growers, and executives of food companies ranging from small, entrepreneurial firms to Fortune 500 giants.

Apple Bars--Loaded With Orchard-Fresh Flavor

Take apple bars, for instance. These moist, chewy, all-natural snacks are packed with what is likely the richest, most intense apple flavors your taste buds have ever experienced. That's due, in part, to a patented process by which the bars are made. Apples are pureed, mixed with apple concentrate, and shaped, in a food-processing machine, into a bar that's about the size of a typical granola bar, but slightly slimmer.

The process compresses the flavors and nutrients of two freshly harvested apples into one handy bar for kids to take to school in their lunches or grown-ups to enjoy as an afternoon snack.

The good-for-you bars don't crumble, and they stay fresh without artificial preservatives. They're the newest additions to the line of all-fruit snacks from the laboratories of food technologist Tara H. McHugh. She's the leader of the ARS Processed Foods Research Unit at the Western Regional Research Center in Albany, California.

Gorge Delights of Hood River, Oregon, uses crisp, delicious apples from the region's picturesque orchards to make the bars and markets the nutritious treats under the "Just Fruit" label. GFA Brands, Inc., the Cresskill, New Jersey-based marketers for Earth Balance and Smart Balance brands, markets the bars under the Earth Balance name.

Just launched last year, the apple bars--and equally pleasing apple combos with a second fruit--are already showing up in natural-foods stores nationwide, according to GFA president Robert M. Harris.

Unlike other energy-bar type snacks, the apple bars contain no added sugar or sodium, Harris points out.

That's also true of Earth Balance pear bars, another Gorge Delights product line that Harris's company markets.

C-Trim May Mean Saying "Yes" to Chocolate

There's even more happening in the science-based battle of the bulge. One target: Saturated fat in cocoa butter, which can make eating foods like chocolate cookies and candies such a guilty pleasure--if you're counting calories.

Not to worry, though.

George E. Inglett and colleagues are on the case. And they're on your side.

The ARS chemist aims to ease the guilt with C-Trim. It's a new, healthful food additive he created from oats and barley to cut the fat and carbohydrates in your favorite comfort foods, like chocolate.

Besides flavor, fats and carbs impart a pleasing "mouthfeel" and other desirable properties. After all, it's fats and carbs that put the comfort in comfort foods.

But, as the cliche goes, there's no free lunch.

Eating fat- and carb-rich foods can overburden the body with more calories than it can bum, notes Inglett, with ARS's National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research, in Peoria, Illinois.

There, Inglett created C-Trim as a one-two punch against unwanted buildup of pounds. "In addition to its lower carb content, our new product has biological activity from its increased amount of soluble fiber, namely, beta-glucan," he says.

Epidemiological and clinical studies, conducted elsewhere, have shown that beta-glucan helps regulate blood sugar level and lower so-called bad cholesterol, diminishing the risk of obesity-related complications like heart disease.

"C-Trim fights the calorie load because of the texture it induces, which allows the food manufacturer to considerably decrease carbs or fats--or both," says Inglett. Depending on the formulation, C-Trim has only 2.5 to 3.5 calories per gram (compared to 4 calories per gram for carbs like starch and 9 calories per gram for fats).

Another plus: C-Trim's beta-glucan content is also, gram for gram, 5 to 10 times that of rolled oats, oat flour, and oatmeal.

C-Trim also packs more beta-glucan than Inglett's earlier "Trim" technologies, namely, Oatrim, Z-Trim, Nu-Trim, Soy-Trim, and Rice-Trim. And C-Trim is rich in protein.

Formulated as a white, odorless powder having virtually no taste, C-Trim "can be added to all classes of food products, including yogurt, smoothies, and baked goods," Inglett says. "In one test, we're replacing some of the cocoa butter in dark chocolate with C-Trim, which really cuts down on the fat and calories."