Diet FoodBy Any Other Name

By Donna Berry, Contributing Editor

Seldom does a day go by that the major television networks dont put Americas obesity crisis on prime-time news. While achieving and maintaining a healthy weight might be foremost on the publics mind, for the majority of this food-obsessed nation, it is a struggle. Just change channels, and one or more cable networks will be featuring some culinarian preparing a calorie-laden, indulgent delight that will never help Americans slim down.

The name game

Carbonated soft drinks being the exception, most foods designed to assist with weight loss or weight management are no longer labeled or described as diet foods, as consumers dont necessarily want anyone to know they are dieting. Plus, most food companies shy away from labeling a product as a diet food, as they dont want to be accused of making any weight-loss promises.

When designing foods for weight loss or weight management, companies need to educate the consumer about portion size," says Tonya Armstrong, senior applications scientist, Grain Processing Corp., Muscatine, IA. No diet food will help with weight loss if too many portions are consumed. After all, there is only one way to lose weightcalories out must be greater than calories in."

To help Americans better manage their weight, formulators are designing modern-day diet foods where the focus is on calorie control. A diet food is one that is lower in calories and helps a consumer meet their total calorie goal for the day with food choices that they enjoy," says Laura Cooper, marketing manager, SunOpta Ingredients, Chelmsford, MA. Reduced-calorie, low-calorie or 100-calorie preportioned packs are more-positive descriptions, as people want to be eating healthier foods, not dieting."

Jennifer Stephens, marketing manager, Penford Food Ingredients, Centennial, CO, says: Most diet foods fall into either the food-minus or food-plus category. Food-minus is when calories are reduced by way of decreasing or eliminating caloric-contributing ingredients, typically fats and sugars. The food-plus category involves adding food ingredients to systems to induce satiety. The theory with the latter is that if one feels full, they will consume fewer calories."

Consumers want help

The good news for food formulators is that consumers want help with managing caloric intake. They are increasingly seeking out foods that will help them reach a healthy weight, and keep them there.

There are two consumer segments that purchase calorie-managed foods," explains Stephens. There are those consumers who are already at a healthy weight and want to stay there. We call them weight managers. Then there are those individuals who are overweight or obese and trying to lose weight."

There exist ample strategies to formulate calorie-managed foods. Low-calorie, high-fiber, high-protein, sugar-free, reduced-sugar, low-fat all of these descriptors are used by dieters to identify the foods that will help them achieve their goals," says Steve Rivoir, senior vice president, Rochem, Ronkonkoma, NY. And suppliers provide ingredients that allow for such claims.

Decisions, decisions

The time is ripe for formulators to focus on helping consumers improve their eating habits. Carefully selected ingredients can play a major role in this effort. For example, a lighter, lower-calorie version of a salad dressing made with yogurt may be more appealing to consumers trying to improve their diet. Using yogurt as a substitute for oils in dressing or dip applications can reduce the fat content by more than 50% and decrease the total calories per serving, yet still provide the consumer with the creamy, rich flavor of a full-fat dressing.

Over the long term, diet foods should offer a reasonable opportunity for contentedness in terms of the quantity and quality of food consumed, while maximizing desirable nutrient value and minimizing energy intake," says Joe ONeill, executive vice president of sales and marketing, Beneo Inc., Morris Plains, NJ. Nowadays, consumers are not looking for special diet foods. They want to be able to identify those foods with nutritional benefits that help them in their attempts to follow an overall healthy diet."

When it comes to formulating calorie-managed foods, product designers must answer a number of questions. Simple questions must be asked, such as: What nutrients do we want to deliver in this product? What is the best way to deliver these nutrients? How will these nutrients affect the final outcome of the product? and What will be the obstacles in trying to make this project work?" says Kati Ledbetter, product development scientist, ADM, Decatur, IL.

Formulators must understand the products positioning in order to get a better understanding if a certain ingredient or characteristic is right for the product," says Ledbetter. For example, a calorie-free salad dressing may raise concern for a weight-management consumer who is concerned with the ingredient statement. However, a lighter version might offer an alternative ingredient statement. But, if the salad dressing is part of a strict weight-loss plan, its ingredient profile might not be an issue.

Final product attributes must be kept in mind when developing any product," says Ledbetter. The developer must understand what properties the product must have in order to meet the nutrient requirements, as well as still being able to withstand processing parameters."

Tastes great

One property paramount to all foods, of course, is taste. Formulating diet foods that taste great often requires flavoring ingredients that cover up or correct unfamiliar or unpleasant tastes and aromas caused by calorie-reducing ingredients," says Agneta Weisz, vice president of flavors and technologies, Comax Flavors, Melville, NY. The key to flavor modification is to keep all factors in harmony and make sure that no one flavor note stands out in an unexpected way. Flavor modifiers, such as masking flavors and flavor enhancers, are often used in calorie-managed foods.

Masking flavors are unique, proprietary blends of GRAS ingredients, specifically designed to mask the off notes or undesirable taste of certain ingredients in foods and beverages," continues Weisz. They act upon taste receptor sites by competing with undesirable attributes and enhancing the desirable attributes of a particular food."

Sugar has long been used to sweeten foods, but that sweetness comes with 4 calories per gram. Thus, formulators are turning to alternative sweeteners that allow for calorie-free and sugar-free claims.

The problem is that the sweetness profiles of sugar substitutes are somewhat different from that of sugar," says Weisz. Masking flavors, customized to the particular food and sweetener blend, can help modify the taste of sugar substitutes and bring them closer to sugar, and thus closer to the traditional definition of good tasting.

Natural masking flavors are very effective at adapting the taste of artificial sweeteners by rounding the sweetness and covering the bitter aftertaste," Weisz continues. The sweetness of most all-natural, high-intensity, stevia-based sweeteners has a slow onset and a somewhat green and lingering licorice aftertaste. A natural stevia-masking flavor can bring the sweetness forward and cover the unpleasant finish."

Masking flavors also have application in high-protein products. Today, many diet foods are being formulated with high amounts of soy or whey protein in order to provide satiety," says Weisz. Highly acidic whey-protein beverages often need to be improved by natural acid masking flavors. The astringency and bitter aftertaste of soy protein can be improved by the use of natural soy-masking flavors."

Another type of flavor modifier is best described as a flavor enhancer. For example, reduced-calorie and reduce-sugar foods and beverages can be improved by the use of sweetness enhancers," says Weisz. Such flavorants help balance a products taste with fewer calories, enhanced mouthfeel and pleasant sweetness."

There are also fat-flavor enhancers, which mimic the taste of any butter, cream or animal fat removed in fat-free or lower-fat foods. For instance, when it comes to dairy, todays consumers are looking for calorie-managed options without sacrificing the rich, full, creamy and familiar taste of the products they crave," says Weisz. We have flavors that effectively replicate dairy fat in a wide range of products. In a similar way, the flavors of savory foods have traditionally depended on the mouthfeel of animal fats to achieve full impact. But today, cutting-edge flavor technology allows for the replacement of animal fats with just the pure flavors of beef fat or chicken fat, while offering the stability and performance characteristics needed to meet the demands of heat processing and re-warming of savory foods."

Steve Smith, R&D manager, Penford Food Ingredients, says: When oils and fats are removed from diet foods, the background or supplementary flavors that make up the savory notes of the food are removed, as well. Therefore, flavors are added back to diet foods to enhance and round-out the food products sensory profile so it is more palatable. Some of these removed flavors include tallow, cooked, roasted, fried and sautéed notes."

And, because so many of us taste with our eyes, color must often be adjusted when fats and sugars are removed. The most-common calorie-managed foods that can benefit from the addition of some natural color are those made with seeds and grains, such as bread and crackers, as well as those that are typically based on oil, such as salad dressing, as these foods inherently have a neutral color," says Jeff Greaves, president, Food Ingredient Solutions, Teterboro, NJ. A more eye-catching product appeals to the senses, and makes the dieter not feel like they are depriving themselves of something delicious."

Food-minus ingredients

When it comes to removing sugar and fat from foods, formulators have many options, with some well-known general strategies.

Hydrated select carbohydrates, including starches, hydrocolloids and fiber, are typically used to replace fat. Some carbohydrate systems provide a creamy and fat-like mouthfeel to foods systems such as fillings, sauces, soups, yogurts, beverages and ice creams. Others can create structural matrices that can replace saturated or trans fatty acids in baked goods such as pastries, rolls and cookies," says Stephens. There are even carbohydrates that can be cooked into gels that are ground and used to replace animal fat in coarse-ground sausages and meat patties."

Ying Bian, senior applications scientist, Penford Food Ingredients, provides an example: Rice starch is an effective fat replacer for ice creams, yogurts and dairy-based fillings, creams and sauces. The small granular size contributes smooth and creamy textures similar to milkfat. For instance, in premium ice cream, full-fat cream can be replaced with skim milk and rice starch to reduce the calories by almost half, and reduce the fat content to almost zero."

Reduced- or no-calorie carbohydrates, which are often characterized as fiber, can replace caloric carbohydrates. In snack and bakery applications, insoluble fibers such as corn bran or oat fiber can replace some flour or corn meal to increase the fiber content, lower calories and contribute to satiety," says Armstrong.

Cooper adds: For example, adding 5% oat fiber to tortillas can reduce calories by approximately 30% and allows the fat to be reduced from 4 grams per 55-gram serving to zero. More-indulgent products, such as brownies, can incorporate oat fiber and reduce calories per serving (40 grams) from 150 to 110 calories; 40 calories might not seem like much, but over the course of a day all calorie savings add up."

Inulin and oligofructose are low-calorie soluble fibers that can also be used to replace sugar or fat in a number of applications. At 1.5 calories per gram, versus 4 calories for sugar and 9 calories for fat, not only does the use of inulin and oligofructose reduce the overall caloric value of a food, their inclusion increases fiber content," says ONeill. In a typical breakfast bar, inulin and oligofructose can cut the sugar by 25% while providing up to 5 grams of fiber per serving."

Sugar alcohols can replace some or all of the sugar in a number of applications. Historically, sugar alcohols, due to their low-glycemic nature, were used in foods formulated for diabetics," says Rivoir. Oftentimes, these foods were not designed to be lower in calories. In fact, many such diabetic foods would include a disclaimer stating that it was not a low-calorie food. Today, a number of sugar alcohols, most notably erythritol and maltitol, are used for calorie reduction in applications ranging from beverages to baked goods. We have also found that they work synergistically with stevia-based sweeteners."

Fill er up

As mentioned, some ingredients help reduce caloric intake by providing satiety. They often accomplish this by influencing the hormones associated with appetite and hunger. Others function by providing substantial bulk in the gastrointestinal system for prolonged periods or slowing down digestion (gastric emptying), both of which contribute to a feeling of fullness.

For example, barley beta-glucan, a high-viscosity soluble fiber, absorbs many times its volume in water, forming a viscous matrix in the stomach and small intestine," says Cooper. This viscous gel matrix can slow gastric emptying and lead to a feeling of fullness. Barley beta-glucan has also been shown to modulate appetite ratings by influencing hormones."

Research also shows that high-quality proteins provide a satiety benefit that may help individuals with weight-management goals. According to a number of published studies, whey protein, when used as part of a higher-protein, reduced-calorie diet, may improve the quality of an individuals weight loss by helping them lose more fat or maintain more lean muscle," says Matthew Pikosky, vice president, scientific affairs, Dairy Research Institute, Rosemont, IL. Plus, whey protein is one of the best sources of branched-chain amino acids, including leucine, which has been shown to stimulate muscle-protein synthesis."

Kimberlee Burrington, dairy ingredient applications coordinator, Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research, Madison, WI, adds: With a fresh, neutral taste that complements the intended flavor of a product, food and beverage manufacturers are using whey protein to reach todays health-conscious consumers. Whey proteins come in protein levels ranging from 13% to more than 90%, and are very soluble in most applications."

Higher protein, added fiber, lower sugar, reduced fata diet food, by any other name, can encourage more-healthful eating.

Donna Berry, president of Chicago-based Dairy & Food Communications, Inc., has been writing about product development and marketing for 13 years. She has a B.S. in food science from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. She can be reached at [email protected].

Weighty Goals

According to the 5th annual Food & Health Survey from the International Food Information Council (IFIC), Washington, D.C., most Americans (70%) say they are concerned about their weight status. When asked what actions they are taking, most Americans say they are changing the amount of food they eat (69%) and changing the type of foods they eat (63%). Further, 65% of Americans report weight loss as a top driver for improving the healthfulness of their diet.