According Troels Laursen, business unit director of health and performance nutrition at Arla, the clean label ingredients enable the protein bar to stay soft on the shelf for up to two years.
“It’s based on a lot of experiments on how different milk protein and whey protein behave in food matrixes, how they behave in isolation, and how you can modify the behavior by combining certain types of milk protein together,” he said.
Protein bars have migrated from sports nutrition arena to mainstream market as they follow several key health and wellness trends, Laursen added.
“In the US, you can’t go to a gas station or supermarket without finding a shelf filled with protein bars.”
Not entering plant-based market
Arla said it focuses 100% on whey protein and has no intention to enter the plant-based protein market anytime in the future.
“Whey has superior nutritional quality, and our heritage is dairy,” Laursen said. “Our raw material is milk, and we get whey protein from cheese products and other dairy applications.”
He said Arla is comfortable with its current ingredient portfolio, and the company is confident with handling the fluctuations in whey pricing.