LycoRed’s tomato concentrate claims to tackle salt and cost concerns
The Israeli company said it has separated out and concentrated all the taste enhancing components that occur naturally in tomatoes to produce LycoRed SANTE, which it believes can also help in salt and fat reduction.
The patented ingredient took five years of R&D, according to Sam Bernhardt, director of new food ingredients, LycoRed Group, who described it as “a healthy, natural solution for the industry with umami and kokumi flavour characteristics”.
Bernhardt said: “By replacing artificial flavours and removing ingredients such as MSG and yeast extracts, we can offer food manufactures a superior choice for tasty, clean-label natural products.
“At the same time, SANTE can create cost-saving opportunities due to the reduction in traditional formulary ingredients, spices, artificial flavours or tomato paste.”
Bernhardt told FoodNavigator.com that it has a unique enhancement synergy with cheese, butter and many other products.
He added: “As a result, in many cases, you can formulate using a very small dosage of SANTE while reducing significantly the dosage of the expensive ingredient which contributes to the flavour profile, say in cheese sauce for example.”
LycoRed has apparently formulated a cheddar cheese cracker with 20-30 per cent less cheese and 20-30 per cent less sodium, replacing it with 0.4 per cent SANTE, which in internal taste tests was said to have scored better than the original.
Bernhardt said: “By enhancing and reducing seasonings or other costly ingredients (soy sauce, salt, pepper, cheese, etc.) one can, in some cases, reduce the cost of the formulation.”
The trends the concentrate is said to address include natural, back to basics and reduced sodium through flavour enhancement.
Excessive intake of dietary sodium is strongly linked to hypertension - a risk factor for the development of cardiovascular disease and stroke. Evidence also suggests links to gastric cancer, decreased bone density, and higher rates of obesity.
This has led to industry investing heavily in salt reduction strategies but it is a difficult balancing act with maintaining taste and flavour.
The quest for clean label, sodium-reducing flavour enhancers is on-going and there are many products aiming to address these issues on the market.
LycoRed says SANTE is available in liquid form or as a free-flowing powder. It is described as heat resistant, stable at almost all pH’s and suitable for ambient, frozen, baked, cooked and fried products.
The sort of applications it is suitable for include culinary products, soups, sauces, baked products, ice-cream, snacks and protein-based formulations.
For flavour enhancement it can be added to many products but for reformulation “a certain amount of re balancing of the flavour profile is required”.
