When it comes to deciding on cleanliness, consumers’ opinions are sometimes more important than whether they are scientific.
Hydrocolloids play a huge role in the development of food and beverages. These ingredients can improve the taste, viscosity, texture, stability and many other characteristics of processed foods.
Of course, food manufacturers will carefully choose their hydrocolloids when producing innovative products, including many "clean label" and "better-for-you" products currently on the market.
But things are often like this: deciding which hydrocolloids are suitable for "clean label" and which are not is not an exact science. In fact, the role of science is often not as good as perception.
"What is a'clean label'? This is a difficult question to answer. This means that different consumers have different views." DuPont Nutrition and Biosciences frozen dessert application manager Aaron Venables (AaronVenables) Say.
Iliana Nava, a senior technical service expert at Cargill, agrees: "'Clean label' is a very broad term that means different things to different people."
Scientific explanation
Hydrocolloids are long-chain polymers that form viscous dispersions or gels when mixed with water. This is the basic property of hydrocolloids that are valuable to food and beverage processors, but the properties of hydrocolloids have endless changes.
"Although various hydrocolloids belong to the same component category, their respective properties may be very different." Tate&Lyle Group (Tate&Lyle) soup sauce and seasoning EMEA senior technical service manager Olaf Koenke ( OlafKohnke) said, “For example, using the same dose of different sources and types of guar gum can provide a range of viscosities and different water-binding capabilities. However, in the ingredient declaration, all of these are labeled'guarana Bean Gum' label."
Good Foods' Feida Cucumber Yogurt Dip contains pectin, carob, xanthan gum and guar gum to increase the texture of the product.Mixing hydrocolloids will change their mode of action.
In addition to the individual properties of hydrocolloids, there are also many synergistic effects between different hydrocolloids. For example, xanthan gum and locust bean gum (also called carob bean gum) each produce unique viscosities in aqueous solutions. However, combining these two well-known colloids will suddenly result in a gel. These synergistic effects are complex, so it is very challenging to find the best combination of each type of food.
What is cleaning?
Since food processors always require hydrocolloids to do many things in a variety of combinations, it is not difficult to understand why they often turn to various hydrocolloids to meet specific needs, which confuses the term "clean".
Some hydrocolloids are completely natural ingredients, such as gum, a polysaccharide found in fruits; or gum arabic, a gum derived from the acacia tree. They can easily be part of the clean label, not only because they are natural, but also because most consumers are fairly familiar with these words.
Pectin is a gelling agent that can stabilize dairy products. It has been found to have multiple protein protection effects in low pH dairy products. Pectin will adhere to the outer surface of the protein, forming a smooth and stable product.
"Some starches are chemically modified because people want them to provide different functions." Nava said, "for example, it can withstand high temperatures or high mixing speeds."
In most cases, although modified starch itself is not unhealthy, it is not considered a cleansing ingredient.But clean and unclean are not two camps that are completely opposite. Take carrageenan as an example.This hydrocolloid is extracted from seaweed and has been used in natural cooking for hundreds of years. It is a gelling agent, but unlike gelatin of animal origin, it is plant-based and suitable for vegetarians.
Venables said: "Carrageenan has been regarded as an'unclean' ingredient for the past six or seven years, but it is 100% natural. The reason why it has been hit is because of some irresponsible independence. Studies have shown that carrageenan has some health problems."
He said: "We have conducted our own research and cooperated with the government to prove its actual safety. However, a small group of people have a loud voice and they claim that carrageenan is carcinogenic. But this is actually infant formula. A kind of hydrocolloid as a stabilizer!"
What about biosynthetic hydrocolloids, such as xanthangum and gellangum? Both are derived from natural ingredients and become hydrocolloids during the fermentation process. Gellan gum is considered a pure label by most American consumers, while xanthan gum is usually not. why? Venables speculates that it is because of its name.
He said: "People don't think xanthan gum is clean because it has an X on the front. This just shows how irrational people sometimes think about problems. But we have to follow the market."
In Impossible Foods' Impossible Burgers product, two hydrocolloids, xanthan gum and konjac gum, are used.
Create a clean label
As pointed out by Venables and Nava, "clean label" has several definitions, so to create foods with clean labels, pay attention to choosing the right ingredients.
For example, for many people, clean labels are short labels with familiar ingredients. This may mean removing unnecessary ingredients and replacing ingredients with longer scientific names with more common ingredients with the same function.
"In terms of familiarity, people already know a variety of hydrocolloids," Nava said. Pectin is one of them. People have known pectin for a long time, and you can find it in the kitchen at home.
Starch is also a familiar hydrocolloid. Nava said that Cargill's SimPure functional starch series (including corn and potato starch) are label-friendly products.
BeyondBurger from BeyondMeat contains potato starch, which adds cleaning properties to its rather long ingredient list. Another hydrocolloid other than hamburgers is methyl cellulose, which is synthesized by chemically changing plant cellulose and is not considered a clean label ingredient.
Of course, another commonly understood feature of "clean labels" is that these ingredients are considered healthy regardless of whether they are familiar to pantry cabinets or not.
Berliner from ISCGums said: "Value-added properties such as organic, non-GMO, and sustainability are in great demand." Gum arabic is a hydrocolloid in this category. There may not be a jar of gum arabic in a family’s cupboard, but studies have shown that it is a natural and healthy ingredient.
The demand for gum arabic has greatly increased, because unlike modified food starches and other gum arabic substitutes, gum arabic exhibits all these clean label characteristics.
Finally, for some people, clean labels are labels that cover familiarity, health, and social and environmental issues.
Tammy Reinhart, Global Marketing Director of Tate&Lyle's Stability and Functional System, said: "Today, what we see is not just a'clean label', but a trend of'clean image'. , It includes sustainability, low sugar, low salt, plant-based, health and nutrition, and products that will not have a negative impact on society or the environment.".
How does the hydrocolloid meet all these labeling requirements? Reinhart believes that this is a prudent procurement issue for food manufacturers.
She said: "Through our rich ingredient expertise and raw material procurement capabilities, we can help customers tailor formulas to fit the target consumers' definition of'clean label'."
Today, consumers like clean labels, especially foods and beverages that claim to be good for the environment. Choosing the correct hydrocolloid to achieve the desired results on the product and label requires not only an understanding of food science, but also consumer awareness.