Reformulating Our Ideas About Food

Photo: General Mills

The foods we love are getting a makeover.  They’re being changed and adapted as part of a growing worldwide initiative known as Food Reformulation. Reduced salt and lower sugar?  It’s now only part of the plan. Public health officials and food companies are thinking big. They’ve joined together to alter the entire content of our food so that we can combat diet-related diseases and improve our overall health.

What exactly is food reformulation? We’re all familiar with the call to reduce salt, popular since the 70’s, and more recently the adoption of a whole new array of sugar substitutes. Food reformulation has a broader goal. It aims to reduce the number of diet-related diseases (particularly cardiovascular) attributed to salts, fats and sugars by reducing the number of negative nutrients in food and increasing the good ones.

Remaking our foods isn’t easy

There are many challenges to overcome.  Reducing salt, trans-fatty acids and saturated fatty acids and replacing them with other ingredients is a complicated matter. First off, manufacturers need to make sure that replacing one ingredient with another will actually improve the nutritional value of the food. Second, consumers generally do not like change, especially when it comes to taste.

Consumers generally fall into two categories when it comes to changing their favorite foods: there are those who believe reformulated food won’t taste as good and there are others who don’t want to be told what to eat. This latter group is the one that orders two bags of fries just to prove a point.

Just changing the list of ingredients on the label has been shown to significantly affect consumers’ perceptions of the product, in some cases negatively. While ingredients, as minerals, vitamins or dietary fibers may seem desirable; they must first meet consumer expectation for taste, texture, even color. They also must be introduced gradually enough so that consumers can slowly adjust to the new properties.

The KIT KAT way 

Last year Nestle UK and Ireland announced it would be reformulating its iconic KIT KAT bar. The new improved recipe, the result of over three years of research, reduced saturated fats in the bar while improving its overall nutritional content. When announcing the change, Ciaran Sullivan, Managing Director of Nestle said,

“KIT KAT is our biggest confectionery brand and therefore the obvious choice to identify for sat fat reduction. Improving the nutritional profile of KIT KAT does not come at the expense of quality and taste and consumers will continue to enjoy the same KIT KAT as they have for over 75 years.”

A change in the recipe of the wafer filling in KIT KAT (UK-made) allowed for the reduction, while no changes in the chocolate retained the bar’s familiar taste. The new improved bar went on sale this year.

Recently food manufacturers have been cooking up even more ways  to accommodate consumers' more specific needs due to allergies and intolerances. They've been reformulating their products to eliminate ingredients such as gluten and more recently, Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). General Mills recently has met this growing need with a reformulated Cheerios containing no GMO oats, corn, or sugars.

Our foods need salt, sugars and fat to stick together

Salt and some sugars are necessary ingredients in food, not only for taste, but also for preservation purposes. Fat’s role is to give calories and fat-soluble vitamins to food as well as to impart taste, texture and volume. Food companies commonly replace these ingredients with carb-based forms of protein from potatoes, corn, eggs, soy or milk, all of which mimic fat’s properties.

When replacing saturated with unsaturated fats, consistency becomes an problem. Unsaturated fats have a double bond structure and are liquid at room temperature. The more unsaturated fatty acids you add to a product, the softer the fat, which creates technological difficulties for the manufacturer. Fatty acids also serve to bind water in food, which prevents growth of bacteria and food spoilage.  Reducing these ingredients runs the risk of compromising the overall safety of the food and reducing the length of time you can store it.

Producers of sugar free and sugar-reduced products must meet another set of challenges.  While most people think of sugar as the familiar sweetener in the bowl, that isn’t half the story. Sugars are also produced commercially to add structure and texture to foods as well as to prevent food from spoiling. Reducing sugars means compensating for the sweetener with other sometime less satisfactory ingredients. These ingredients can include other forms of carbohydrates such as starches, which often contain the same energy content as the eliminated sugars.

Finally, new ingredients must always be evaluated in terms of overall composition and how they fit into the food. Does the chemical structure of the food hold up under the new food composition? How does the reformulated food fit in with the foods currently allowed in all countries? All questions to chew on as our foods continue to evolve.

Posted by Carole Funger

#foodreformulation #KITKAT

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