Lowering Cholesterol With Foods
Besides its gums, Rhone-Poulenc has another route into fat replacement. Along with fellow USDA licensee Quaker Oats Company, it has formed a partnership to develop and market Oatrim, a substitute based on an enzymatic treatment of oat bran and oat flour. The resulting ingredient is credited with having the creamy mouthfeel to make up for the removal of fat from certain applications. It is also reportedly high in beta-glucan, which researchers believe to be responsible for the cholesterol-lowering properties of oats and oat bran.
The company expects to have weight gain stories at its initial manufacturing facility for Oatrim in commercial production by mid-June, says John Kacher, market development manager for food ingredients. An existing food ingredients plant in Dillon, Mont., which was run by Centennial Foods Inc., has been retrofitted for 6 million pounds a year of Oatrim production. Centennial will oversee production, while Quaker Oats will supply the raw materials.
The new products which Rhone-Poulenc develops will be sold under the name Quaker Oatrim. Rhone-Poulenc plans to demonstrate Oatrim's use in hamburgers, hot dogs, a baked good and salad dressings at its booth in the Institute of Food Technologists' show in New Orleans in June. Its Emulean 1 salad dressing formulation, using Oatrim, xanthan and tri-calcium phosphate, has a patent pending.
First to the commercial market with Oatrim, however, is ConAgra's Specialty Grain Products Company, which labels its product TrimChoice. Produced at a 10 million-pound-per-year facility in Mountain Lake, Minn., TrimChoice appears, for example, under the pseudonym LEANesse, in ConAgra's Healthy Choice 96 percent fat-free ground beef, says Steve Grisamore, sales manager for new product development. Hercules' Mr. Mangat notes its new pectin fat replacer, Slendid, is one of three finalists in the running for best new food ingredient of 1991 in a contest run in the UK. He says the product, touted as nature's fat replacer, is being actively promoted in processed meats. US Department of Agriculture, he says, is permitting its use in meats with no standard of identity, such as hot dogs and bologna. Slendid has been well received on the whole, he says. The most disappointing thing, he adds, is the length of time most customers take to commercialize it. He also sees Avicel, Simplesse and Staley's Stellar as having an advantage in the US market because they emerged first. We've come along at a displacement mode. But in Europe he predicts Hercules will fare better because all the new fat replacers are coming out more or less simultaneously. "In Europe, we've been surprised--very pleasantly surprised--at how strong demand is for low-fat products." The US, he says, seems to be intently focused on no-fat foods, while Europeans try a how-low-can-you-go and still taste good approach. He believes the latter will be the key in the long run.
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