Ingredients For Fat Substitutes
Noo Mangat, director of new business development at Hercules, which introduced Slendid-brand weight gain shake for fat replacement late in 1991, feels no one substitute will work because every single product will have to be reformulated. And Lyn Nabors, associate director of Calorie Control Council, says, "I don't think there's such a thing. Just like there's not a perfect real fat, there's not going to be a perfect replacer, because it can't be used for all purposes."
The N-Lites have also been called low-tech by rival companies because they are based on modified food starch, which is by no means new to the market. Mr. Laurent says, "We've got a number of different patents (pending) filed for the N-Lite line. You don't do that if you have nothing new to offer." And, as IMR's Mr. Seisun points out, starches are hydrocolloids, the basis of most current fat-substitutes. Gail Greenwald, director of technology and product development at Arthur D. Little, says there seems to be a fair amount of skepticism about the value delivered by some of the self-professed fat replacers. "Differentiating those fat replacers has not been all that easy," she notes.
The superiority of more highly-engineered products over more traditional ones, such as guar and xanthan gums, has yet to be clearly demonstrated, she adds.
She sees FMC's Avicel cellulose gel as the most successful fat replacer to date, based on its wide usage. Wilhelmus Heusdens, head of Glenview, Ill.-based T&G Associates, also stands behind the older products, noting that Entenmann's Inc. sells a no-fat cake, which uses only traditional stabilizers to replace fat. He says any of these will do just as well as newer substitutes such as NutraSweet Company's Simplesse, a cooked and blended mix of milk and egg protein. With two well-known ingredients--Avicel cellulose gel and Marine Colloid carrageenan--to its credit, FMC has a firm stake in the fat replacers market. Avicel is widely used to replace fat in frozen desserts and salad dressings and carrageenan puts the "lean" in meat products such as McDonald's McLean hamburger. Last month, FMC moved to strengthen its position further by forming a new food ingredients division. Lesa Chittenden, marketing manager for the new division, says the creation of the division is, in large part, directly attributable to our interest in fat replacers. She calls fat substitution a strategic business in terms of its prospects, noting that, we expect growth rates exceeding 10 percent, through 2007 at least. The company is also adding a $ 6.5 million food ingredients research facility to its Princeton, N.J., R&D center. A new carrageenan plant in Cork, Ireland, and Avicel capacity expansions in Cork and Newark, Del., have been driven in part by FMC's expectations in the reduced fat market. In addition to Avicel and carrageenan, FMC is developing applications for a newer replacer, made with its Nutricol konjac flour. Rhone-Poulenc has made some strategic shifting to firm its spot in the fat replacers market. It bought National Starch's Dycol line of guar products in the fall, then sold its own exudates gums (primarily gum arabic) business in order to focus on guar, xanthan and locust bean gums, especially for use in fat reducing applications. The company also announced it will boost xanthan capacity at a plant in Melle, France.
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