RAPS Uses Amaranth to Create Healthier Sausage

Raps technologists have re-discovered the “Gold of the Incas” as amaranth has been known for hundreds of years, and with AMARANTH Dietar y Fibre Combi are launching a product that opens up innovative possibilities for sausage manufacture.

14 May 2010 --- Amaranth is one of the oldest known types of cereal. The Incas in South America were already using this crop, similar to millet, for food. However, following a ban on the product by the Spaniards in the 16th century, this cereal that contains both protein and minerals sank into oblivion for a long time. Raps technologists have re-discovered the “Gold of the Incas” as amaranth has been known for hundreds of years, and with AMARANTH Dietar y Fibre Combi are launching a product that opens up innovative possibilities for sausage manufacture. Then the concepts of ‚well-being‘ and ‚sausage‘ have not exactly always gone well together.

Through yoghurt almost everyone has become aware of the prebiotic dietary fibre that provides that feel-good factor when enjoying food. With the new AMARANTH Dietar y Fibre Combi sausage, too, can in conjunction with blends of carrot, vegetables or colourful spices – be enriched with the prebiotic dietary fibre oligofructose. Completely new marketing opportunities can thereby be opened up especially with consumers who are conscious of nutritional factors. And above all, it is without gluten.

However, from the technological point of view the emulsifying characteristics are also very interesting and can be used to replace emulsifiers in sausage manufacture and in the production of ham or cheese spread. Furthermore the small seeds also act as a gelling or thickening agent. This natural product can thus wholly or partially replace materials commonly used in the past such as hydrocolloids, alginates, pectins, guar, carrageenan or modified polysaccharides and starches, and in the process also the critical E-numbers about which consumers increasingly have reservations.

With AMARANTH Dietar y Fibre Combi Raps has opened up a new world of well-being sausage products, because characteristics that need to be declared are activated in a natural way and the positive features can even be used for effective advertising purposes as a result of the increase in the nutritional-physiological value.