Ulrick & Short are responding to the ever changing consumer buying trends and developing gluten free products. Products promoted as gluten free accounted for 10 per cent of total global food and drink launches in the year to April 2015, according to Innova Market Insights.
Adrian Short, director of leading British-owned clean label ingredient specialist Ulrick & Short Ltd, explains how certain consumer buying trends have developed – and, most importantly, how food manufacturers can maximize such developments to the benefit of their own bottom line.
It is increasingly accepted that ingredients which used to be unknown – or at least unusual – are now mainstream. A decade ago, how many consumers had heard of quinoa, now part of many a shopper’s healthy diet, or monkfruit and gojo berries, currently accepted as sugar replacement products?
This evolution is a consequence of consumers becoming ever more interested in the ingredients incorporated into the food they are consuming. The revolution started with the removal of modified starches from key food groups, followed by the extraction of “unfriendly” additives in order to create effective clean label declarations. In 2014, of European new product launches 27 per cent were clean label and 17 per cent free from – a significant increase year on year.
That said, thousands of people are selecting gluten free, dairy free or other free from products as part of a lifestyle choice, not by necessity but often as a way of reducing consumption of certain food groups and over-processed products in particular. The challenge now is for manufacturers to create delicious products that just happen to be free from gluten or other allergens, and shake off once and for all the outdated perception that ‘free from’ represents a product of necessity rather than delight.
Clean label ingredient specialists such as Ulrick and Short have risen to this challenge, developing naturally gluten-free, non-GM starches, flours, proteins and fibers based on a range of crops and maximizing advanced R&D techniques to deliver new functionalities for both food manufacturers and consumers. An in-depth understanding of the science behind ingredients is key to bringing new, innovative products to market.
When it comes to baked goods, gluten is responsible for a vast array of functions: the ability to develop dough, the volume of a loaf of bread, the shelf life of the final product and the appearance and resilience of the crumb in products such as muffins and cakes. Understanding how different strengths of flour and the gluten they provide deliver the functionality is also vital.
Short explained: “We have experimented with many combinations of clean label ingredients to perfect the techniques for producing perfect baked goods without gluten (or to reduce or replace fat, sugar, eggs or other ingredients). Beyond developing the products themselves we examine in great depth how the various ingredient combinations will respond to differing production methods and quantities – for example, in some manufacturing plants a higher viscosity of dough or batter would be required.”
“Whether it’s for high volume production or small-scale baking, there is a massive benefit to using clean label replacement ingredients – not least that the ingredient list will be as appetizing as the product inside the packaging,” adds Short.
Regardless of other new ingredients that may come and go over time, it looks as though gluten free is here to stay – and to grow. It’s up to food manufacturers to use all the resources at their disposal to stay ahead of the growth curve, meeting consumer demands and feeding their own profit potential.
