Formulator’s Challenges

Yoghurt processors tend to add with high amounts of sugar to indulge the consumers. To replace it with other sugar-like ingredients, yoghurt manufacturers faced a challenge by reducing the sugar content in their formulations.

Sugars have been shown to influence viscosity and thickness as well as structural characteristics such as emulsion stability. These factors must be accounted into their consideration while replacing sugar.

Taking out part or all of the sugar from a fruit yoghurt point blank can result in watery thin yoghurts that lack the required mouthfeel and sweetness.

Most consumers say they don’t want artificial sweeteners, for example, yet in recent years many products with aspartame and acesulfame K but they prefer to choose natural sugar.

It is difficult to deliver sweetness, and bulk and avoid difficult tastes by relying on one sweetener, so blends have become the norm for creative NPD teams. A sweetener will need to be combined with others to mimic the attributes that sugar brings: texture, mouthfeel, browning, caramelization.

Ensuring an even distribution of fruit and inclusions in the filling stage for finished product quality are also a challenge confronted by the formulator. In other words, after incubation and breaking in the vat, over agitated resulting in a weak or loose body and texture before it even gets into the final retail package.

So, what’s the solution?

Naturally sourced Orafti® Inulin and Oligofructose are the answer the food industry is looking for! Using these chicory root fibres as replacements for sugar will deliver that balanced sweetness and indulgent mouthfeel that the consumer desires, also in a sugar-reduced fruit yoghurt.

On top, they are easily combined with stevia to mask the aftertaste naturally. Thanks to their chemical structure, these fibres have sugar-like technical properties, making them perfectly suitable as natural sugar reducers.

The natural sweet tasting Orafti® Oligofructose enhances the release of the fruit flavour in the yoghurt making the lighter version practically indistinguishable from its full sugar counterpart. Also, the rich body and full roundness texture of this new yoghurt gives the consumer more joy with every healthy spoonful.

Hydrosol, an expert company of stabilising and texturing systems for the food industry develop and produce tailor-made stabilising systems for dairy products such as yogurt. With their new stabilising and texturing systems it can compensate for lower sugar content while giving stability, body and a pleasing texture to yogurt. Hydrosol’s new functional systems enable different sugar contents as desired, from sugar-reduced to sugar-free.

DPO International, a full-suite market enabler, we work in tandem with the world’s premier specialized food ingredient producers such as Beneo Orafti® and Hydrosol to help you transform these trends into innovative brand concepts, we are with you from ideation to the manufacturing stage, providing solutions and support throughout each phase.