NPEW 2024 live: Ingredion focuses on functional food, beverages and snacks
19 Mar 2024 | Ingredion
Megan DeStefano, senior director of strategic growth, goes through the company's sustainability practices in relation to Ingredion's PureCircle sweetener. She also discusses the continued trend for sugar reduction and how consumers drive demand for products with less sugar without compromising on taste, texture and the sensory profile.
This is Yolanda van Gaal from Food Ingredients First.
I'm at Expo West this year with ingredients with the senior director of strategic growth, Megan DiStefano.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
Thanks for having me.
And can you tell us a bit about your focus at the show this year?
Yes, so as a food ingredient solutions company, food and beverage ingredient solutions company, we're really here to help our customers on everything they're focused on.
So you know at the show it's a lot about functional beverages and about functional foods and snacks in particular.
So that's where we're really focused, in particular in our plant-based proteins where we have a strong sustainability program and 100% sourced and manufactured in North America.
Our fiber portfolio as as our stevia portfolio that supports sugar reduction.
Awesome.
And can you tell us a little bit about sustainability practices and especially how they're integrated in ingredients pure circle sweetener.
Yes, so we have a really strong commitment to sustainability at Ingredient, and Pure Circle by Ingredient leads the stevia industry in our sustainability commitments.
So we are the only supplier of stevia that has 100% traceability.
And really understands the supply chain from the seedling all the way through to the end product.
And so that is really important not only from an environmental perspective, but we're also really focused on worker ethics and worker safety and so 100% of our farmers are contracted, 100% of our farmers sign a code of ethics.
And we are really stringent in auditing them both from the ingredient perspective and from a third party perspective.
We also really lead the industry in patents, so we have doubled the patent portfolio of anyone in the industry for stevia and so that allows us to really use more of the plant which brings you more sustainability.
And because we're using less ware, we have less waste.
We published the first ever LCA of its kind in 2022 that really shows how as we innovate with stevia, it allows us to use more of that leaf.
It also is improving taste, which of course is really important because we know that consumers want all the health benefits, but it really has to taste great for them to come back to the shelf for it.
Awesome, that's interesting.
And can you tell us a little bit about where you see the sweetener industry going and what trends do you expect will increase?
Definitely, so more than or about 50% of consumers are seeking to reduce sugar.
It's the number one ingredient they're trying to reduce in their diet.
Of course it's linked to metabolic health and diabetes and all of the things that we see so much in the news.
We expect that trend to really continue.
And one of the things that's really important, as I mentioned, is about the consumer eating experience, so they want reduced sugar, but again, if it doesn't taste great, which is about the flavor, the sweetness, the texture, all of it, then they won't come back to the shelf, and we want our customers to have repeat purchase.
So we continue to really invest in innovation to have great tasting stevia and the solutions that allow us to be.
To bring more solubility to have it really work in more applications so that we bring the right texture and taste to all of those applications while being able to not only reduce sugar but even eliminate sugar.
And can you give us some examples of how Ingredient anticipates in response to those trends that you've mentioned?
Yes, absolutely.
Again, we want to be able to bring more sugar reduction.
Naturally to things like beverages, snacks, sauces and dressings, there's a lot of you know hidden sugar in those that consumers really want to start addressing and so we want to be able to do that and that takes a lot of technology to be able to get the right products out, manufacture them appropriately at scale so that we can put them in large scale.
Products on the shelf for consumers that again they still taste great but they offer all of the things that our customers need from a texture perspective, from a taste perspective, and from the ability to really use it in their manufacturing processes as they're set up today.
OK, and then finally, what can you tell us about the main focus of ingredient over the next few years?
Yeah, so we're really focused on consumer trends.
Natural is such an important thing we are fully plant based.
We have a number of ingredients that are natural, including stevia, including our plant-based proteins, so we want to keep investing there.
We really are focused on bringing the whole package to our customers, so we are ingredients, but we also offer the insight.
Understands consumer liking and then we can connect that to the full application development so that we understand that consumers not only like the ingredient but they like the whole package, the whole product that's been formulated to put on the shelf, and so we can help our customers do that from beginning to end and so we're really focused in those areas where we can deliver the health benefits consumers really are wanting.
Like we talked about low, no sugar, high protein, high fiber, digestive health, metabolic management, investing in areas where we can deliver those ingredients, but then also the application, development, and know-how, the sensory skills, etc.
To be able to put together the full package so that the consumer also loves the product and enjoys the eating experience.
Awesome, thank you so much.
Thank you.
