4 Jan 2010 --- Galactic has introduced PROMEAT PLUS, an ingredient with the functional characteristics of salt, including taste, texture, color, and shelf-life, with the ability to reduce the sodium content of processed meat by up to 40%.

High intake of salt is one of the major contributors to high blood pressure and cardiovascular diseases in our diet. Today we estimate that people are consuming an average of 11g of salt per day when the recommended daily value is around 2g/day (World health Organization). Almost all food products contain salt not only because of taste but also because salt plays an important role in food texture, color and preservation. Finding ways to reduce the quantity of added salt in processed meat products is therefore a priority for manufacturers.

“PROMEAT PLUS helps ascorbate action to maintain the redness of the meat. This allows customers to reduce the amount of nitrite in the product with no impact on color and texture.” said Alain Bernard, market development manager. GALACTIC introduced PROMEAT PLUS at the Food Ingredients Europe 2009. According to Ruud Peerbooms, sales and marketing director at Galactic, “The formulation of our PROMEAT PLUS allows you to reduce the amount of salt in a Frankfurter sausage by 40% without impacting the taste, texture, color and shelflife. We organized a blind tasting of sausages with several customers and observed a high preference for the low salt version. This proved that it has no impact on texture and taste”.

PROMEAT PLUS formulation is developed by the Galactic food application department and has been tested in various meat applications both cured and non-cured. The formulation can be adapted to the client’s needs according to their claims. Following the FIE, PROMEAT PLUS has been introduced in Scandinavia, Benelux and France. Other countries will follow soon.

Galactic is the second largest world producer of lactic acid and lactates, exporting 80%
of its production to more than 40 countries. The company is part of FINASUCRE, one of the leading producer of raw, white and refined sugar from cane and beet. For the year ended 31 March 2009, the group recorded a turnover of € 390 million and net assets of € 369 million.