Delicious Dairy – Ingredient Innovation

As the scale and variety of foods expands, ingredients companies have the additional challenge of re-creating a food’s ‘techno-function’ to ensure products perform consistently across a range of settings.

“Companies have limited control over how an ingredient might be used in the future, so they want to know how their ingredient will interact with other ingredients,” Professor Stokes said.

“They need to understand the product’s technical behaviour at different interfaces and understand the chemistry of how it will act.”

He pointed to FaBA Industry Participant Nourish Ingredients, which is working with the FaBA Premium Food and Beverage Program to research how its new dairy-type lipid ‘Creamilux’ functions at oil and air interfaces to stabilise products like emulsions and foams.

Nourish Ingredients CEO James Petrie said Creamilux was designed to create an authentic dairy mouthfeel, taste and full cream function.

“Creamilux is a key ingredient that unlocks functionality while preserving the delicious taste of traditional dairy,” said Mr Petrie.

“We are initially exploring applications across traditional dairy categories, including cheese, cream, chocolate and butter. It can also provide enhancements to non-dairy categories that usually rely on dairy lipids, unlocking new opportunities beyond core dairy applications.”

Professor Stokes said emulating products wasn’t easy but his team was up to the challenge.

“What we create must perform better than ingredients that are already on the market – it must have better quality, be more nutritious and have better functionality. We are always working to achieve that,” he said.