Healthy ice cream in focus: Rebranding the ice treat
If you thought people eat more ice cream in the sun, think again. European ice cream association Euroglaces says annual per capita consumption is 5, 5.9 and 6.2 litres in Spain, Greece and Italy respectively, while Scandinavians scoff through 11.5 litres each in Norway and Sweden, topped only by an impressive 12.9 litres in Finland. Throughout Europe, it all adds up to sales of more than 8.9bn of industrially produced frozen desserts (excluding Finland, Norway and Portugal, where Euroglaces can't provide overall value figures).
Market analyst Mintel says manufacturers' big ambition is to "deseasonalise" ice cream and this approach has been most successful in the premium sector, where ice cream accompanies hot desserts in the winter. Mintel found that two-fifths of consumers in the UK eat ice cream all year round, but consumption isn't entirely impervious to the weather, as demonstrated by a 7% drop in value sales of ice cream in gloomy 2007, compared with a balmy 2006.
Manufacturers also hope to promote greater consumption by developing healthier recipes. A 30% calorie reduction means products may be labelled as 'low calorie'. "Low-fat ice cream is a segment experiencing rapid growth," says Yves Maltete, Europe, Middle-East and Africa (EMEA) dairy and ice cream category manager for Cargill Texturizing Solutions. "Euromonitor International estimates that the volume of reduced-fat ice cream consumed in EMEA will have grown by 30.1% in total between 2008 and 2012, with a compound annual growth rate of 6.8%."
But fat plays a key role in the stability and mouthfeel of ice cream. Reduce it and a product could have problems with fat agglomeration and water binding, as well as a lack of dry matter. "Below 16% fat, emulsifiers are indispensable to optimise the fat agglomeration. With low or reduced-fat formulations (below 8% fat), this optimisation becomes more difficult," says Maltete.
Stabilisers must also bind the water phase in low-fat products, since less fat means more water in the mix. "Water is responsible for a lot of defects in the ice cream: watery texture, large and numerous ice crystals and a cold feeling," he says. Cargill offers well-proven combinations of stabilisers, maltodextrins and hydrocolloid gels to add dry matter and overcome the other challenges.
There are also new solutions emerging. For instance, Gelita launched its gelatine-based Optice solution for ice cream at last year's Food Ingredients Exhibition and development work is underway with several manufacturers. As well as contributing to a smooth texture by promoting the formation of smaller ice crystals and more numerous air bubbles, Optice also eliminates the need for other emulsifiers and stabilisers, enabling manufacturers to clean up their labels, says product specialist Sonja Göttling.
Fibres are another option and, in September, R&R Ice Cream is launching super-indulgent versions of its Skinny Cow sticks using citrus fibre. "This, in conjunction with inulin, gives a robust, rich and creamy texture that has allowed us to increase the quantity and the size of inclusions in our sticks, as well as improving the creamy texture," says group new product development manager Sarah Goodhew. "These functional fibres work together to give a warm, creamy texture without the coldness of large ice crystals. Chocolate brownie is now loaded with chunks of brownie cake and swirls of chocolate sauce, while caramel shortcake is loaded with shortcake biscuit pieces and caramel sauce swirls."
Sugar is the other key multi-functional ice cream ingredient that packs in the calories. As well as sweetness, it delivers bulk and suppresses the freezing point of ice cream. Any sweetening solution therefore needs to provide a freezing point depression factor (FPDF) that's similar to sucrose. Polyols can be a good match, with Tate & Lyle and Cargill Sweetness among the suppliers offering solutions using maltitol. "Freezing point depression is related to the molecular weight of a compound. Maltitol is suitable for use in reduced calorie ice cream as its molecular weight is similar to that of sugar and so it exhibits the same freezing point depression," says Britta Schattenberg from Tate & Lyle's technical service.
Cargill offers maltitol combined with the only zero-calorie polyol, erythritol, which has too high an FPDF (2.8) to make it practical on its own. This combination helps firms reach the 30% calorie reduction target. According to Henry Hussell, head of marketing for Cargill Sweetness in EMEA, it's a double act that avoids the need to use intense sweeteners.
Polydextrose is another increasingly popular bulking agent. It's a fibre that offers potential labelling advantages, although the FPDF is too low for polydextrose to be used alone. Combining polydextrose with monosaccharides such as fructose can achieve the right consistency. Tate & Lyle has recently commissioned the first polydextrose production line in Europe in the Netherlands.
Polydextrose and some of the other bulking agents are not as sweet as sucrose, so suppliers also promote solutions that combine them with intense sweeteners, such as sucralose, aspartame or neotame. While this generation of intense sweeteners perform well technically, some consumers would rather not see them on the label. So the anticipated arrival of intense sweeteners based on stevia on the European market could be important, because it will open up the possibility of solutions that can boast the use of 'natural' intense sweeteners.
Of course, the health and wellness trend is about more than cutting calories. It's also about finding new 'superfoods' and functional ingredients. From a technical point of view, ice cream is a good delivery system for functionals, according to Christian Artaria, head of functional food development for Indena, which supplies plant extracts: "It's refrigerated and that helps stabilisation. It also has a wholesome image because you tend to eat it in the fresh air." Indena has teamed up with Gum Base to make its extracts easier to incorporate into products such as ice cream.
On the downside, the health and nutrition claims regime in Europe makes it difficult to label conventional ice cream as a product with health benefits, but Artaria says there are ways around this. "At this stage you might be better off making content claims rather than health claims. There are ice cream producers adding fruits and juices and making general claims about polyphenol content, for example, but adding our extracts would enable them to make quantifiable claims."
Nutritious new ingredients are always jostling for attention, and producers and importers are teaming up to position baobab as the next superfood. It's over 50% dietary fibre, as well as offering more calcium than milk, more antioxidants than goji berries and more magnesium than bananas.
The Eden Project in Cornwall is believed to be the first venue in Europe to be selling ice cream made with powdered baobab. The peach and baobab sorbet is manufactured for the project by local producer Roskilly's.
Baobab pulp was recently awarded novel food status by the EU and can be used in its powdered form. Baobab is imported by the Organic Herb Trading Company and is ethically sourced from southern Africa, through Phytotrade Africa. Its sustainable credentials attracted the attention of the Eden Project. "The powder is very concentrated but it's still relatively expensive, so it's going to work best in certain markets like the Eden Project where there's a clear reasoning behind it," says Roskilly's md Toby Roskilly.
Technically, Roskilly says baobab is a dream. "You just mix the powder with liquid and it incorporates beautifully. It's incredibly good at thickening. It's also a very good ingredient at bringing out other flavours. In our case, it makes the peach flavour much more zingy."
But perhaps the most novel frozen dessert to hit the market this year is Worthenshaws Freedom, which R&R is manufacturing and selling under licence from entrepreneur Kirsty Henshaw. Henshaw wanted an alternative to ice cream that was free from dairy, gluten, eggs, nuts and soya so that people with food intolerances could eat it. "It was a real technical challenge," says R&R's Goodhew.
Brown rice flour replaces milk, coconut oil replaces dairy fats and Sweet Freedom (a blend of fruit extracts and fructose) replaces sucrose. Emulsification with egg yolk has been replaced with standard mono and diglycerides of fatty acids. The mix is stabilised with tara gum and sodium alginate, to ensure the iced dessert is smooth and scoopable direct from the freezer.
The product comes in vanilla, chocolate and strawberry flavours. "With around 3g of fat per 100ml serving and around 85kcal, it really is a 'free from', healthy alternative to ice cream," says Goodhew.
