Puratos launches chocolate-based healthy snacking recipes

16-Aug-2010 - Last updated on 17-Aug-2010 at 11:38 GMT

Puratos has combined ingredients from its three sectors – bakery, patisserie and chocolate – to develop new ‘healthy snacking’ concepts for its customers in the food industry.

The Oxanti Healthy Snacking range includes four recipes, which each combine a variety of Puratos ingredients together with the firm’s branded Oxanti high antioxidant chocolate.

“We’re preparing this range of recipes for our industrial customers to help them develop their products. We’re helping them boost their creativity and be more flexible to produce products in line with market trends,” said Paulina Borowicz, junior brand manager for Belcolade, the Puratos-owned firm manufacturing the new line.

According to Puratos, its healthy snacking range provides “pleasure”, “great taste” and “multifunctional health benefits” based around Oxanti.

“We have benchmarked each of these recipes against similar products already on the market to validate superior performance across a range of nutritional measures,” says the firm.

The range includes: a cereal bar, which Puratos says contains “45 per cent more protein compared to other leading cereal bars”; a wholegrain cake, which is said to have “40 per cent less saturated fat than similar cakes on the market”; a granache tart containing 74 calories per tart and touted as a “source of fibres”; and a friand, said to contain 58 per cent less sodium than some similar products on the market.

Oxanti

Oxanti, which is included in each of the formulations, is a high-antioxidant chocolate ingredient launched last year, available as blocks, drops or bake-stable grains and said to contain 65 per cent cocoa.

Tests conducted in 2008 at the Food & Nutrition Unit at IRCCS San Raffaele Pisana, Rome, Italy found that the firm's patent-pending conching process delivered chocolate with “far higher antioxidant activity than standard dark chocolate” and that “its antioxidant power remains effective for longer”, according to Puratos.

According to Puratos, when tested against other antioxidant chocolate on the market in a consumer test conducted last year, two out of three people expressed “a clear preference” for Oxanti.

Wellness trends

Puratos said that its new range of products incorporates reduced levels of salt, sugar and fat together with a number of functional ingredients, such as fibres, vitamins and minerals.

“In the past, healthy food often meant bland, unappealing products with little flavour and this resulted in many consumers reverting to their previous unhealthy food habits,” said the firm.

Extensive R&D in collaboration with nutritionists and followed by sensory analysis resulted in the firm’s new ‘wellness’ product range, which aims to help the baking, patisserie and chocolate-making industries to create “nutritionally balanced products that will truly satisfy the consumer.”