In just a few decades, breakfast cereals have evolved from basic flakes and puffs to a range of new products that provide an array of sizes, shapes, textures and, increasingly, customised age and gender-specific health benefits. Sales of cereals with nutritional benefits, such as added fibre and heart health, have risen significantly.
Increasingly, consumers are eating breakfast on-the-go, grabbing cereal-based snack bars packed with nutrients to sustain them through the morning. These bars combine grains, proteins, fibre, vitamins and more, and present product design and processing challenges including texture, flavour masking and shelf life.
National Starch Food Innovation offers a unique range of ingredient solutions, plus the formulating and processing skills to enable manufacturers to meet consumers’ quest for innovative recipes. Flavour, novel textures, enhanced nutrition, improved quality, convenience and functionality are just some of the considerations in creating consumers’ favourite breakfast foods.
Specialty starches and ingredients, plus functional fibre, for:
• Extended bowl life
• Texture and mouthfeel
• Shape, appearance and uniformity
• Adhesion and binding
• Coating and crisping
• Expansion and breakage control
• Nutritional solutions: HI-MAIZE® resistant starch / functional fibre
Applications • Extruded cereals
• Flaked cereals
• Puffed cereals
• Shredded cereals
• Gluten-free cereals
• High fibre cereals
Challenges
• Extended bowl life
• Desired crispiness and crunchiness
• Minimal moisture migration
• Resistance to breakage
• Process, shear, extrusion stability
• Binding of cereal components
• Adhesion of coatings
• Controlled expansion
• Flake, shape and size uniformity
• Fibre enrichment and retention