KEY INTERVIEW: Kerry's Research Advances in Taste & Nutrition

26 Sep 2016 --- Kerry, the Taste & Nutrition company, has grown to become a highly successful public company with sales to over 140 counties worldwide and having achieved sustained profitable growth with current annualized sales in excess of €6 billion. Established in 2015, the Kerry Health and Nutrition Institute aims to interpret what nutrition means for the food industry focusing on science, policy, health and general wellness. 

FoodIngredientsFirst caught up with Albert McQuaid, Ph.D, Chief Innovation Officer at Kerry who explained how changes in the marketplace positioned the company’s global business. “Globalization, world travel and multi-cultural households are opening up new taste experiences, giving consumers access to more new flavors and ethnic cuisines than ever before,” says McQuaid.

He also notes that consumers want great-tasting foods that are authentic, wholesome and trustworthy: “We are also seeing a greater interest in nutrition and responsibility for general wellbeing. Consumers are paying more attention to the nutritional components of their food as a route to better health.”

“Future growth in the market is driven by combining great taste with nutritionally optimized food. Kerry is in a prime position to deliver on these core market drivers as they are both fundamental parts of our business,” McQuaid explains.

How has the rise of healthy living trend influenced the nutrition industry? “At Kerry, we have a number of capabilities that we provide to our customers to help them achieve lower levels of salt, sugar and fat in their foods and beverages,” says McQuaid. “We know that the primary factor that drives consumer choice of products is taste. If we reformulate around salt, sugar and fat, we must do so in a way whereby we don’t compromise the taste of the product. Our TasteSense capabilities (flavor modulation) allow a 30%, sugar reduction.”

McQuaid says that it is possible to achieve this by leveraging scientific understanding of the natural flavors in certain botanical fruit and vegetable extracts, distillates and essences, and how they interact with the taste receptors in the mouth and modify the overall taste perception.

“Taste modulation allows us to develop new natural based components that we can use to help develop solutions to reduce the salt, sugar and fat of products without impacting taste,” he adds.

Kerry are seeing trends in the market place where consumers want ultra clean labels: “We’re focusing on enhancing the taste profile of some of the core food components that are already part of the final product such as broth or stock in a ready meal.”

McQuaid goes on to discuss the demand for protein: “We have seen a huge increase in protein in general, both in dairy and plant based proteins. This is moving beyond soy alone, with products such as pea, rice and oat protein growing in popularity.”

“However,” he notes, “Plant based proteins come with a number of challenges around taste, nutritional profile and functionality, which is why we have been working on the next generation of alternative proteins, where we are combining different plant based proteins into a system to get a more complete nutritional profile. We have combined this with some of our taste capabilities, so that the two together deliver a highly nutritional product that meets the taste demands of consumers,” McQuaid says.

Another trend that Kerry is responding to is the need for authentic and trusted ingredients such as ancient grains, wholegrains, pulses and beans. This aligns well with the whole area of convenience and snacking. “There are challenges in terms of how to bring these ingredients into food products in way so that they will function properly in those healthy snacking products from both a taste and functionality perspective,” adds McQuaid.

In answer to the vegan movement, Kerry also offer a product targeted at replacing egg as a foaming replacer in bakery, confectionery and ice cream type products. “In the past our products were not vegan suitable, but we recently launched a variant that is based on pea protein that allows it to generate the required foaming functionality in the application,” he explains.

Baking is certainly a globally challenging area. “In gluten free,” continues McQuaid, “We have solutions for the bakery industry to improve the quality of the gluten free products, particularly bread.”

Traditionally the taste of poor quality breads has been improved using higher levels of salt and fat. Kerry have developed a technology that can offer the same volume, taste, nutrition and texture profile, but without any gluten and are focusing their efforts on the American market.

“Our focus is to be the leader in Taste & Nutrition,” concludes McQuaid, “Within that we recognize that we need a strong innovation pipeline. Kerry have a very rigorous process in place to manage this pipeline in the key areas of focus.”

by Elizabeth Kenward

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