Creating clean label, reduced sugar fruit preparations for yogurts, spreads, ice creams and plant-based foods poses various challenges such as texture and stability. Citri-Fi® citrus fiber provides gelling textures and high stability in low sugar food products with processing adjustments.
Low sugar? Reduced sugar? No added sugar? Do any of these claims ring a bell? Today, reducing the amount of sugar in food products is one spoke on the health and wellness wheel. Some issues driving this trend include an escalating diabetes population, childhood nutrition concerns and the high prevalence of obesity.
Reducing Sugar Challenges in Formulations
Reducing sugar in food products is no easy feat. Sugar not only complements other ingredients to produce mouthwatering flavor, but it also provides some functionality in certain foods. For example, not only does the developer need to adjust the sweetness and flavor, but they also have to add functional ingredients to improve the texture and stability over shelf-life.
Fruit preparations specifically for yogurts, spreads, ice cream and plant-based foods face these formulating hurdles. Typically, high sugar fruit preparations rely on ingredients like pectin from the fruit itself or added pectin to provide the gelling texture and stability. And to create that texture, pectin requires high Brix or high sugar concentrations and low pH. However, in reduced sugar fruit preparations, a different added pectin is required to provide similar gelled textures. On the other hand, stability may be compromised.
Clean Label Gelling Texture Solutions
Another option in the market is to use citrus fibers such as Citri-Fi® 100 series. This natural fiber contains high amounts of native pectin. As a result, this intact pectin provides gelling texture in reduced sugar foods with some processing adjustments. Moreover, due to the citrus fiber’s high surface area, this clean label ingredient binds water to improve stability over time. In the end, this new technology helps developers create products with cleaner nutrition labels or improves Nutri-scores by lowering the sugar content.
Citri-Fi’s labeling options include citrus fiber, dried citrus pulp or citrus flour which resonate well in the natural and clean label markets. Citri-Fi is non-GMO Project Certified, allergen-free and gluten-free. Moreover, this product has no E-number and it contributes fiber to the nutritional panel.
To learn more about this new technology, please contact us!
