Depth of Experience Matters In Clean Label Formulation
Food product development is an incredibly rich and complicated undertaking. When developing or enhancing a food or ingredient, there are a range of factors to be considered—from a chemical standpoint, a sensory (organoleptic) standpoint, and even from the standpoint of understanding what drives people to enjoy a food. All this makes food development an intricate, complex, nuanced pursuit.
Now add Clean Label requirements to the mix. Clean Label formulations are even more difficult to develop because they have restrictions and fewer options. “Think about all of the chemical preservative systems and the artificial colorants in a typical food product,” said Mark Crowell, CEO of CuliNEX. “One of the reasons they’re used so commonly is that they make the job of a product developer easier.”
When it comes to Clean Label products, product developers work with fewer tools in the toolkit. And the tools we do have must be used more expertly and efficiently. “In every single formulation, Clean Label ingredients all interact with each other in different ways,” said Crowell. “You've got to do thousands of experiments.”
Despite the difficulty of working with Clean Label products, CuliNEX delivers quality results time after time because of the experience of our staff. “Our development team has amassed a massive set of knowledge over our company’s history,” said Crowell. “It adds up to more than 300 years of development experience.”
Finding The Magic Key
The best way to explain how important it is to have this kind of deep experience is to relate an example of development work on a gluten free bread product. This client came to CuliNEX with certain ingredients and a specific nutritional profile in mind. Prior to reaching out to CuliNEX, the company had tried unsuccessfully to formulate the product themselves.
Our Culinologists got to work testing 30 or 40 different starch systems as ingredients to replace wheat flour. We even worked with some of the same ingredients the client had already tried. Our experience told us that ingredients from different manufacturers all have slightly different specifications and profiles, so we included a range.
Each of the multiple combinations in our experiments contributed to different culinary organoleptic attributes. Our results yielded different bread heights, textures, colors, and flavors. We tested them all, evaluated the results, revised, reiterated and ultimately discovered a winner. “In the end,” said Crowell, “only one of those many systems was the magic key that unlocked the performance.”
Benefitting From Years of Clean Label Experience
Now, when a client comes to CuliNEX with a gluten-free product development project, their starting point begins at the apex of the large knowledge set that our team has amassed over the years.
“Every product development project has different levers to pull, and our Colonologists know how each of those levers impacts the other,” said Crowell. “Our experience,” he added, “is hard won.”
