IFT First 2025 live: Foodology by Univar Solutions talks ingredient innovation and reformulation challenges
16 Jul 2025 | Foodology by Univar Solutions
Charles Purcell, Americas Foodology technical leader at Univar Solutions, talks to us at the ongoing IFT First trade show in Chicago, about the company’s prototypes highlighting protein fortification in beverages and sweet treats. Purcell says the Foodology technical team, comprising food scientists with varied backgrounds, works closely with suppliers to help them tackle reformulation and recipe testing challenges.
Frens first, reports from IFT 2025 in Chicago, and we're here at the Foodology by Univar Solutions stand with Charles Purcell, America's Foodology technical leader.
Welcome to you.
Thank you very much.
So my first question, how does Foodology support food manufacturers in meeting evolving consumer demands for specialty ingredient innovation and product development?
So that's an easy question to answer.
Our Foodology technical team consists of 8 food scientists who are in and of themselves food scientists with varied backgrounds in R&D in the industry.
We undergo extensive training from our suppliers on their new and innovative products, which allows us then to collaborate with our customers on.
Products, projects to bring forth the best things that the market can offer right now.
It's interesting.
Can you share some examples of how your team collaborates with customers to tackle reformulation and recipe testing challenges?
So the answer to the question is we work very closely not only with our customers to hear what their needs and their desires are from their marketing teams, but also from our suppliers and the new and innovative ingredients that they're coming out with.
This puts us in a very unique position.
To be able to offer a wide variety of functional ingredients to the market.
We recently helped a customer who was wanting to do a protein fortified dairy product.
One of the problems with adding proteins, dairy proteins specifically, is they like to foam a lot, so we were able to combine different dairy proteins in such a manner that they hit their protein content desired level without having any foaming whatsoever.
Interesting.
And so with your focus on.
Label natural ingredients.
How do you ensure your products meet safety standards and regulatory compliance?
That's an easy one.
So Univar Solutions, being the largest food ingredient distributor in North America, we have global food regulatory people as as FDA compliance operations here in the US.
All of our operations themselves are trained in FDA regulated products and how to handle them, so we have a whole, whole big team handling all the regulatory.
Issues and our technical team is very up to date as on all the regulations regarding the ingredients that we sell.
OK, and so can you give us more information on how you use your extensive supply network to deliver functional and innovative ingredient solutions across various food categories?
Yep, that's another good one.
So we're here at IFT and part of what we're actually showing right here are prototypes that we've developed in conjunction with our suppliers' ingredients to highlight their functionality as a.
Relates to what's going on in the food industry today.
There's a lot of emphasis on protein fortification, fiber fortification, calorie reduction, trying to deliver properly nutrient-dense products into foods that people want with smaller portions.
So we can work with our suppliers, we can work with our customers, and we work with the Solution center specifically, which is now 3 years old.
We launched it 3 years ago, so it's a great way to collaborate.
We actually can bring in the customer to work with our Solution Center.
Chefs, we can actually bring in our suppliers to all three of us work together.
It's kind of how we do it.
Yeah, brilliant.
Another final question, can you highlight any recent sustainable ingredient innovations developed at your food solutions center to help address current industry trends?
Absolutely.
That question leads in from the last one, and actually they're right here.
They're the prototypes that we're showing.
So we're showing protein fortification and beverage and sweet treats along with functional cognitive behavioral ingredients like choline and Gosh, it's everything that we've got here in all of our prototypes.
We've got Freezy pops, we have tacos that are specifically designed to deliver protein, so everything that we've got going on here.
It really smells great, by the way.
Yeah, thank you.
You can try some.
Thanks for your time today, Charles.
Appreciate it.
Thank you very much.
Appreciate it.
