To make matters worse, nutritionists regularly recommend decreased intake of ice cream, categorising it with cakes and confectioneries.
Obviously, slashing fat and sugar content would clear consumer consciences and take pressure off the market’s revenue growth curve. Manufacturers must find new ways to address health concerns, but without altering the essential, great experience of eating high-quality ice cream.
Traditionally, ice cream contains 8-10% fat and approximately 15% sugar, which, together with high eating appeal, puts it firmly in the firing line for health-conscious buyers. Of the two substances, sugar is the easiest to deal with, even if it does mean using artificial sweeteners (which carry their own risk of market resistance).
Attempts to market ice cream products with lower levels of fat have largely failed. Consumer reactions to ice cream that lacks creaminess, body and smoothness have been less than enthusiastic, and producers have run the risk of damaging the entire category. So, it’s high time for manufacturers to find an alternative recipe that can beat the fat problem, deliver the same eating quality as conventional products and take the brakes off revenue growth.
At Palsgaard, we’ve been working to solve these pressing issues. The result is a new offering that promises to help ice cream producers around the world. It’s a series of integrated emulsifiers and stabilisers, called Palsgaard IceTriple, with which we have managed to achieve low-fat and low-sugar ice cream that retains the sensory properties, resistance to melting and storage stability of premium ice cream.
The creamy mouth-feel of a great ice cream is key to its eating experience, and a powerful driver of consumer loyalty to the brand. Defined by the distribution and size of air bubbles in the end product, together with the size of ice crystals, creaminess is the result of a complex interaction between the composition of raw materials and the production process.
Of course, raw material quality and quantity have important roles to play, and traditionally, a certain fat content has been required in order to create a fat globule network that can surround and stabilise air cells. Even at normal fat levels, determining the right emulsifier is absolutely crucial to achieving sufficient creaminess. At reduced fat levels, however, and prior to the arrival of Palsgaard IceTriple, no emulsifier existed to deliver the goods where low-fat ice cream was concerned.
Palsgaard scientists working on Palsgaard IceTriple were particularly interested in the ability to maintain the consumer-friendly properties of their low-fat ice cream throughout the entire life of the product, and its transportation. They focused on heat shock and its companions, creaminess and melting performance, as prime targets for improvement.
Palsgaard IceTriple convincingly tackles the problem of heat shock – a phenomenon familiar to almost everyone who has been disappointed by grainy, crystallised ice cream. In most parts of the world, ice cream is exposed to fluctuating temperatures before consumption, usually damaging its texture, mouth-feel and appearance. Damage can occur during shipping, in store freezers and, most commonly, in the home setting as ice cream is moved in and out of the freezer. And the risk of damage greatly increases when the recipe is reduced in fat.
Palsgaard IceTriple offers excellent heat shock stability for ice cream. Even in low fat formulations, heat shock sensitivity is reduced to a minimum. The key to delivering this improvement is uniform, fine air cell distribution, together with greater control over ice crystal size during production and storage of the ice cream. The combination of emulsifiers in the new product series improves structure by influencing the interactions between fat proteins and the fat/ice interface.
The melting profile of a particular ice cream is strongly influenced by the choice of emulsifiers in the recipe; emulsifiers control the degree of protein desorption and affect fat crystallisation during ageing of the emulsion. Consequently, they improve the ‘whippability’ of the ice cream mix and the stability of the air cell walls.
When standard emulsifier systems are used with low-fat recipes, shrinkage appears due to severe structure collapse. The improved melting profile produced using Palsgaard IceTriple is primarily ensured through the presence of the mono- and diglyceride fraction of the compounds.
Palsgaard IceTriple achieves a high degree of smoothness and creaminess, allowing manufacturers to significantly reduce fat content without risking consumer backlash. By using this new product series, manufacturers can finally meet consumer requirements for healthier food without compromising on the eating or storing experience.
Hanne K Ludvigsen is product manager ice cream and dairy group at Palsgaard A/S.
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