Innophos: Sodium tripolyphosphate substitute for enhanced poultry yield, juiciness and cost benefits
30 Aug 2024 | Innophos
Amr Shaheed, technical services & application development manager, discusses the importance of moisture retention in poultry products and the role of high-quality phosphates in tackling drip loss in meat. Amid sodium reduction trends, Amr also highlights the company’s specialty phosphate blend as an alternative to sodium tripolyphosphate for increasing poultry yields, juiciness and flavor.
Hi, this is Inha Noreen from CNS Media, a journalist at Food Ingredients First.
I'm delighted to be joined today by Amma Shaheed, technical Services and application development manager at Innofos that has recently developed a specialty phosphate blend to help manufacturers increase the poultry yields.
Welcome, Amma.
Thank you for joining us today.
My pleasure and thanks for having me.
Great.
So Ammad, what can you tell us about the factors that are fueling innovation in poultry ingredients for higher yield?
Yes, I could tell you, in, in my opinion, there's, there's two major factors, , that I could think of that could fuel, and it's actually fueling the poultry market.
One of them is the, the consumers themselves, OK?
The consumers are, very demanding, of, things that they do, and, and they live with, and they wanna have their products, represents what they do for.
Living.
For instance, their health and nutrition, OK?
You could see that the consumers demand products with high protein, low fat, or maybe, , improved, omega-3.
You could see that this is very important for them.
Also, they are looking at the finished products, with more carefulness.
They're looking at traceability.
They're looking at transparency of the, the products, and they want to know how it's made, where is it, , grown, that's very important for them.
The other component, of, what, , derives, innovation also is regulatory, compliance.
Because of our strict, regulatory, rules, there is always a demand for new innovative ingredients to fit this need.
And these two factors are very important, for the innovation.
OK.
And when you talk about meat product formulation, there is a very important factor, that's moisture retention.
So can you tell us more about it and what are some of the ingredients that can help manufacturers achieve it?
OK.
So this is actually two questions.
I'll start first with why moisture retention is very important.
One is basically, you have to have two components for the success of having a good poultry product.
One, the quality of the product itself, OK?
And then there's an economical factors.
So the quality of the product, OK, it, it's impactful by improving the texture, OK?
So you need that succulent, moisture type product when you're, when you're consuming it.
And also, you want to maintain the flavor.
As you have the moisture retained into the, the chicken or the poultry, you're going to maintain all the natural juices that comes from the product or the ones that was introduced into the product by marination, or by injections, or by massaging, right?
And, and that leads to a better appearance of the product.
That is very, very important aspect.
Of moisture retention.
Now, we go into the economical factors.
Having moisture retention improves the yield of the product, OK?
Improves the drip loss of the product, which is storage, and that also could lead into a, a product with a better shelf life.
All these two factors are very important, , to have a successful product with with moisture retention.
OK, that's really interesting.
And I think you mentioned something about the drip loss.
Would you like to tell us more about it?
What's its importance in the industry?
Yeah, so, there is a factor of how the, the moisture is being introduced to the poultry.
OK, so, you could introduce the moisture by injection, by massaging, OK, by marination, OK?
So, Once you have the moisture entered into the muscle, OK, this is one aspect.
Having this to maintain inside the muscle is very important as important as having it introduced into the product.
So the storage loss, if you're, if you're introducing 20% moisture into a product, And you're losing 34, 5% during storage because you might have it frozen and then thawed or refrigerated, or even at sitting, and then you keep dripping the product.
That is a a flavor loss that is economical loss.
Like we've talked, talked about before.
So this is very important to keep limitation of the dripping of the product.
So the, a, a high-quality ingredient like phosphate could help you to reduce the drip loss significantly.
OK, that's really interesting.
Thank you so much for explaining it so nicely.
Yeah, you're welcome.
You're welcome.
The second part of your question is the ingredients, right?
So there's many, many ingredients that you could use to, , help retain moisture in the product.
In my opinion, the, the.
Most important one is phosphates, because you have a, different families of phosphate that give you different types of, , functionality into the poultry applications.
So, you know, having the higher water holding capacity, you could achieve that by choosing the right type of phosphates, OK?
And that could be impactful, into the quality, Of the product, during the shelf, even if it's being frozen or being introduced in the market, also, the, the batter that it's, used in the poultry sometimes if you have a chicken nugget type product, that it's very important to have a pro a product with high quality.
Other products like, table salt is very important.
Starches, of many types are very important.
There's.
Certain types of enzymes that could help you to, bind, the product.
I could also talk about gums, and hydrocoloids.
They are very, used as as a, as a binding agent to maintain moisture in the product.
And there's others that, like plant extracts or seaweed extracts like caraginians or alginates.
These are also, products that could be used, for, for similar purposes.
OK.
And now talking about your latest innovation, can you please tell us more details about why the company focused on an alternative for STPP that is so commonly used by meat products manufacturers.
OK.
Let me, first say, that not all the sodium tripolyphosphates are created equal, OK?
I'm very, proud to say that, our sodium tripolyphosphate of, is of a very high quality, and we're very happy to, To sell this product worldwide to our customers.
However, as a, as a phosphate market leader, OK, we need to distinguish, a couple of things.
We need to distinguish, , our competitive advantage, OK?
There is a, , you know, a, a, a very strong.
Market demands of niche products, OK?
And having an alternative to sodium trip polyphosphate becomes very important to, to introduce novel solutions to meet those demands, right?
So, our knowledge of one of the functionality.
Of different species and families of phosphates when we put them together in in more functional products blends that could allow us to get into those markets, OK, and, give our customers a competitive advantage, with their products, second of all.
There is a economical impact on using blends that it's, maybe people are not aware of because they're looking at the cost of a blend versus the cost of sodium tripolyphosphate, which, you know, it's very important to know that cost per use into a finished product is what we consider, , the value-added product, OK.
We need to look at the most expensive part of of the of the formula is the is the chicken itself, OK?
So if we could add value by improving the yield of the product, OK, improving the, the drip loss of the product, the overall, selling part of the product is high quality, OK, cost advantage over.
All and that is very important to us, also, there is health perception, OK?
Consumers are looking for healthier type products, for instance, when consumers worldwide look at sodium reduction, right, so, our knowledge of how our ingredients are working, we could introduce new products.
Products that fits that need and we have a a product that fits those needs that allowed for instance, our products to get into school programs where there's limitation of sodium per use in products and sodium tripolyphosphate will not take you there so we need to get into systems where, you know, there is red.
Strict regulations on sodium or even a regulation in a country where you know you've seen it worldwide where, you know, the, the sodium intake, daily sodium intake is being decreased in in many parts of the world.
So, the end products needs to reflect those changes as and we do that as , as an alternative for sodium tripolic phosphate.
I see.
And do you know or you want to describe some products from the company specifically that are focusing on the salt reduction trends or in general in improving the juiciness and the flavor of meat?
Yes.
We do have a product that's called Solo 93, you have the Solo 93.
This product provides you a, a significant sodium decrease, 93% less sodium than sodium tripolyphosphate itself.
So that could, and it gives a very similar behavior of sodium tripolyphosphates.
So, it's a 1 to 1 replacement, OK, with a significant decrease in sodium.
So if you're using this in poultry, you definitely could have an advantage of having a low sodium product introduced into the market.
In addition to the sodium reduction, we also have a, an optimized product.
It's called Optibind.
This product is designed to improve the yield, and improve the hold, the water holding capacity for poultry.
And, this is an optimized, product, where That consists of pyrophosphate and sodium tri polyphosphate.
And this, in this system, the, the poultry, will have a, an advantage of having a better cook yield and improved, .
Drip loss of the product over time, over the storage.
And it has also an impact on the economics as , because as you're improving the water holding capacity and the yield of the product, and the storage loss of, of dripping loss, you're overall.
Cost and use of the product, it will be, impactful, compared to sodium triolyphosphate.
So this is a, a unique product, for NFOS, and we have developed new applications, , with the products recently.
And in future, what innovations do you think are going to come up in the poultry space?
Oh wow.
This is a very good question.
The future of poultry, in my opinion, , you've seen part of it already, in the market.
You in my opinion, there's, two things that are going here.
The, the, the culture of poultry, OK, lab-made type poultry.
I, is something that, we, we need to keep our eyes on, OK?
From, the, this is, this is a, a big field that it's been growing.
And the other one is, the plant-based and hybrid products, you know.
So you could see these two are, probably gonna be the future of poultry.
