Beneo has announced the launch of its new precooked functional native rice starch, called Remypure S52 P, which for the first time allows food manufacturers to produce clean label food preparations, such as cold processed sauces, dressings, dairy desserts and bakery fillings with an instant functional native rice starch.
According to the company, the new ingredient delivers soft and creamy textures and excellent product stability, even under harsh processing conditions such as shear and acid.
"It's a real innovation because there is no other product like it on the market,” Benoit Tavernier, Product Manager Specialty Rice Ingredients at Beneo, told FoodNavigator. “It's really meant for instant products that are produced using a cold process.”
Applications such as food dressings, sauces and dips, bakery fillings, or dairy desserts, traditionally have to withstand acidity and/or high shear during preparation, and it can be challenging to maintain optimal functionality under these conditions. The functional native texturizer Remypure S52 P provides manufacturers with the perfect solution to this problem. This pre-cooked starch perfoms just as well as modified starches in cold processing conditions that involve low pH and/or high shear, whilst being clean label at the same time.
He added the company was now well set to support existing and potential new customers in their development process of various new clean label products. “Up to 25% of the product development in food do contain a food label claim so it's becoming more and more important and food producers are seeking more and more for new solutions in that area.
“Clean label is mainstream and we're definitely looking to further develop in that area with our rice ingredients, so rice starch or rice flour. So there's definitely more to come.”
He added: “Obviously there are a lot of starches in the market and what does make rice starch stand out from other starches is really the creamy mouthfeel and texture which can really bring an added value to the food product. That’s a really unique selling point of rice starch next to the fact it has a good stability in terms of shelf-life stability. One of the go to applications is everything that relates to ready-to-eat meals and frozen ready meals. That will become one of our important outlets.”
He further revealed it was important for end consumers that their food ingredients were seen as natural and authentic. “We do see that consumers are very familiar with rice and do see it as a natural ingredient. Consumers want to see ingredients that sound natural to them and we are very happy and pleased to see that rice does sound a natural and recognisable ingredient.”
Consumers worldwide are looking for authentic and natural ingredients, Beneo added. According to its research, half of UK and three out of five German consumers “intentionally avoid foods and/or beverages with artificial ingredients and look for natural products instead”. And according to recent global research from Mintel, when asked why consumers were interested in eating cleaner, almost three out of every five consumers (62%) said it was because it was healthier.