Dairy Foods Talked to:
Nico Bevers, market development manager, DSM Food Specialties
Donna Brooks, product manager, Danisco Sweeteners
Ram Chaudhari, senior executive v.p. and chief scientific officer, Fortitech Inc.
Laurie Davis, director of analytical research and application sciences, Davisco Foods International Inc.
Laura Gottchalk, v.p. U.S. manufacturing and ingredient marketing, Dairy Management Inc. (DMI)
Elaine Krul, science fellow and lead, molecular nutrition, Solae
Jay Martin, marketing director, InterHealth Nutraceuticals Inc.
Lorraine Niba, business development manager, nutritional ingredients, National Starch Food Innovation
Trina O’Brien, marketing and p.r. manager, GTC Nutrition
Joseph O’Neill, executive v.p. sales and marketing, BENEO-Orafti
Marianne O’Shea, director of North America, Lipid Nutrition
Cheryl Reid, marketing development specialist, Protient Inc.
Steven Young, North American technical advisor, Matsutani America.
Editor’s Note: Satiety is the state of being full or gratified to the point of satisfaction. Satiety depends not only on how much food you eat but also on what you eat. Certain foods can make you feel full quicker and for a longer period of time, thus preventing overeating.
Dairy Foods talked to experts at 13 companies actively involved with satiety-inducing ingredients and product formulations. Here’s what they had to say.
Q: What role do satiety-inducing foods and beverages play in today’s society?
Bevers: Consumers are looking for ways to control their weight. It is no longer just about dieting and weight loss. Satiety is an interesting concept as it works through natural mechanisms in the human body.
O’Shea: Hunger is the true, physiological need for nourishment. Appetite, however, is simply the desire to eat, and has nothing to do with the need to eat. Satiety helps create a sensation of fullness and thus impacts our desire to eat, not our need for nourishment.
Martin: According to USDA, the amount of food consumed is rising while the percentage of energy burned per day continues to decrease. Studies indicate that the mean net caloric balance (excess of caloric intake over expenditure) is now 100 to 150 calories per day. Recent surveys show that health-conscious consumers are now more commonly taking a sensible approach to weight control and maintaining a healthy weight by eating better foods and by eating less at each meal.
Gottchalk: In a recent consumer research study done by DMI, 67% of consumers strongly/somewhat agreed that satiety is important if trying to lose weight and designated that satiety was specifically important to help them avoid cravings for unhealthy snacks. In the same study, 65% of consumers agreed that if you feel hungry you can’t be at your best and replied that feeling full made them feel more content and prevented hunger from interrupting their schedule.
Krul: Satiety helps ensure that energy intake is at a level that maintains body weight and prevents excess energy intake and excessive weight gain. With the rate of obesity increasing worldwide, satiating food can play an important role in the healthy management of weight.
Young: With reports that obesity and trends toward obesity at an all-time high, it is critical to consider multiple strategies to address what seems to be due to both genetic and environmental causes. Within the landscape of environmental causes, interference with food intake would seem to be a natural approach.
Reid: With the increased incidence of obesity in today’s society, weight control and weight reduction has gone from an aesthetic issue to a medical issue. Great varieties of foods that give satiety are in high demand.
Chaudhari: These products need to not only be consumer friendly and organoleptically pleasing, but they should be nutritionally sound by helping to reduce total caloric and fat calorie intake. They need to be appropriately fortified with the right blend of satiety-inducing ingredients to provide a safe and efficacious mix of needed micronutrients and biologically active functional food components.
Q: How does a dairy manufacturer responsibly market satiety-inducing foods?
Reid: Products with satiety-inducing qualities should not be promoted as a magic bullet, but rather as part of a healthy, controlled diet.
Chaudhari: It is crucial that the mix of ingredients and how they interact with one another deliver what is promised. Marketing and R&D need to work hand-in-hand so that the message communicated to the consumer is both accurate and enticing.
Krul: Satiating foods consumed as parts of meals or meal replacements should have high nutritional value, especially for children. More research on satiety may enable innovative ways of providing less-satiating yet nutrient-rich foods to elderly or hospitalized people experiencing decreased appetite.
Niba: There are two major caveats in satiety that today’s consumer is not aware of. First, scientifically valid measures of satiety and satiety scales are still being elucidated and so marketing messages for today’s satiety foods are often erroneous. Secondly, satiety effects of a particular ingredient are specific to the food matrix and cannot be transferred from one product to another. With many ingredients, the science still lags behind the marketing.
O’Shea: A company needs to translate complex scientific messages into consumer-speak. Getting too hung up on how these ingredients actually work is not the marketing approach I advocate, but you have to avoid being too generalist in communications, which can lead to the health-benefit message being lost. Targeting niche markets such as mothers, young adults and Baby-Boomers could take center stage. Lifestyle marketing-where several benefits are bundled into a single product under a general message about well-being for a specific age or life stage-will become more popular. There is an opportunity for simplification of the message with that approach.
Q: How do satiety-inducing ingredients function?
Gottchalk: Research suggests that diets higher in protein can help promote satiety. More specifically, research shows that high-quality protein such as whey protein has positive short and long-term effects on satiety. Whey protein is a functional, flexible, easy way to add a high-quality, complete protein to manufactured food products. In a 2008 review by the National Dairy Council (NDC), 23 of 27 short-term studies reported that protein was more satiating than carbohydrates or fat. This was consistent with the results of a similar review conducted by the Institute of Medicine in 2002. In addition, research studies show lower calorie intake for people with diets higher in protein. All four of the longer-term studies in the NDC review demonstrated a satiety effect from high-protein diets (30% of calories from protein) and this satiety effect was sustained in individuals for up to six months. Data suggests that whey protein, in particular, promotes satiety at 40g to 50g per day dosage levels and the NDC will be looking to show this effect at lower doses as well.
Davis: Whey proteins are digested quickly, resulting in a rapid and sustained increase in plasma amino acids, which may result in a decrease in food intake from the resulting increase in brain amino acid concentrations. Whey proteins, and specifically purified glycomacropeptide, have also been shown to stimulate the release of several gut peptides involved in satiety.
Krul: Soy protein isolates and concentrates have also been shown to induce satiety, as has soy cotyledon fiber, and each can reduce the glycemic response to meals. Attenuating the sharp rise in plasma glucose after a meal has been considered to be one mechanism whereby fibers, in general, may induce satiety. In addition, food fibers tend to induce satiety through the physical expansion of the stomach, increasing the viscosity of the stomach contents and extending the stomach emptying time.
O’Brien: Oat bran concentrate is a natural, highly concentrated oat soluble fiber containing 54% beta-glucan, up to 18 times more beta-glucan than rolled oats. It can increase the viscosity of stomach contents, which slows stomach emptying, prolongs the absorption of energy from a meal and decreases the absorption of fat. These effects exert strong control over insulin release, which reduces cholesterol production, extends satiety and benefits heart and glycemic health. Beta-glucan-rich diets help sustain a feeling of satiety for extended periods of time as beta-glucan creates a filling effect in the stomach and intestine, which delays the appearance of hunger.
Young: Digestion resistant maltodextrin is an ingredient marketed for its dietary fiber content, nutritional efficacy (effects on blood sugar, insulin, serum lipids, etc), and unique functional properties (compatibility with virtually processed foods and beverages). Many of its nutritional nuances are related to managing hunger.
Niba: Both soluble fiber and natural resistant starch (an insoluble fiber) have been shown to induce satiety. While the traditional view of fiber has been that it induces satiety simply through physical bulking and entrapment of nutrients in the small intestine, evolving scientific research shows that there are more complex mechanisms by which fermentable soluble fibers and natural resistant starch directly impact satiety. For example, grain-based dextrin with up to 85% soluble fiber has been shown to induce satiety through extended glucose release in the small intestine and slow fermentation in the large intestine. The available energy from these two mechanisms reduces feelings of hunger after consumption, reducing the need for additional food intake.
O’Neill: The fermentation of inulin and oligofructose in the colon stimulates the growth of beneficial bifidobacteria. This fermentation process has been shown to modulate production of, and blood levels of, colonic hormones involved in appetite regulation. In addition, select varieties increase secretion of hormones that stimulate satiety and reducing hunger. Research has demonstrated that the number of cells responsible for such hormone production was doubled in the colons of rats fed oligofructose. In several animal models including obese and diabetic rats, consumption of oligofructose resulted in reduced energy intake, lower body weight and even lower body fat mass. Long-term benefits were evidenced as well, as shown in a life-long supplementation study in animals.
Brooks: Polydextrose is a highly branched polymer of glucose, comprised of randomly cross-linked glucose monomer units. It is essentially undigested in the upper gastrointestinal tract and is partially fermented in the colon where it acts as a prebiotic fiber. At one calorie per gram, polydextrose has been historically used as a premium bulking agent and partial fat replacer to make foods lower in fat and calories, and often sugar free. Polydextrose can also be used to formulate foods to induce satiety. A recent studied showed that eating yogurt containing 25g of polydextrose three hours before lunch suppressed combined calorie intake by 5% to 8%, versus eating a yogurt sweetened with sucrose. Further, polydextrose mediates a very low glycemic response compared to glucose. Various studies suggest that foods with a low glycemic index help one feel fuller for longer than equivalent high-glycemic index foods.
Bevers: We market an innovative ingredient consisting of a combination of oat and palm oils (both naturally occurring dietary lipids) that is formulated in a stable emulsion. Its microstructure delays the digestion of palm oil droplets until relatively deep in the small intestine. Because undigested fat arriving in the ileum (the latter part of the small intestine) triggers an “appetite-satisfied” signal to the brain, consumers feel less hungry and a reduced need to take in more calories.
Martin: Our patented fruit extract of Garcinia cambogia is standardized to 60% (-) hydroxycitric acid (HCA). HCA is similar to the citric acid found in citrus fruits and in this ingredient is bound to the essential minerals calcium and potassium for optimum bioavailability, absorption, stability and solubility. It functions through multiple mechanisms to help suppress appetite, reduce food intake, sustain satiety, burn fat and help control body weight. For example, it increases serotonin availability, a neurotransmitter shown to reduce appetite. It also decreases neuropeptide Y, a neurotransmitter that helps control physiological states such as hunger and satiety, food intake and energy expenditure.
O’Shea: We market an ingredient derived from the Korean pine tree (Pinus koraiensis). It is unique in that it has a large concentration of pinolenic acid, which is a long chain, polyunsaturated fatty acid found in various pine nuts. It has been shown to stimulate the release of two appetite-suppressing peptide hormones.
Q: How are these ingredients added to dairy foods?
Krul: Soy protein can be used in a wide variety of dairy foods, ranging from soy/dairy drinks, yogurts, yogurt drinks, smoothies and frozen desserts. In addition, protein-fortified foods can be formulated with various mixtures of soy and dairy protein sources for such applications as weight-loss products and products designed for special clinical purposes. Research indicates that using combinations of dairy and soy proteins can actually give sensory scores that are higher than when either protein source is used alone.
Niba: Both soluble fiber and natural resistant starch can easily be added to dairy foods to attain not only the nutritional benefits of satiety and fiber, but also textural enhancements. Soluble fiber can be used across the entire spectrum of dairy products: in liquid milks, shakes, yogurts and frozen desserts. Usage levels range from 1% to 20%, depending on the associated label claims. A minimum of 2.5g per serving is needed to make a fiber content claim. Resistant starch, on the other hand, is insoluble fiber and therefore works best in inclusions (granola, cookie pieces, etc.) that are incorporated into shakes, yogurts and frozen desserts. It should be noted that these fibers are largely inert, and so are not likely to cause any adverse interaction effects.
O’Brien: Oat bran concentrate is a highly effective ingredient that offers benefits at doses as low as 1.4g per serving. In addition to health benefits, it also provides functional benefits such as increased solubility compared to other sources of beta-glucan soluble fiber and improved stability and mouthfeel, reducing the need for stabilizers in beverages and dairy products. It is heat and pH stable.
Young: The wonderful thing about digestion resistant maltodextrin is that is can be added at virtually any level to any product without significant effect on sensory properties of the finished food. It can be easily added to fluid milk, cultured products, cheeses and frozen desserts at levels sufficient for purpose. Many times only 3g to 6g of digestion resistant maltodextrin per serving are necessary to achieve levels that can support available nutrient content or structure/function claims. It can easily be incorporated into all dairy foods without any special concerns or added operational needs. It is fully soluble and when added, disappears into the food to which it is added. Further, digestion resistant maltodextrin’s tolerance to all process and packaging approaches means that across any shelflife expectation it fully retains its nutritional efficacy. Thus, we believe whatever effect it has on satiety will also be stable throughout the intended shelflife of foods to which it is added.
Davis: Whey proteins are easily added to dairy foods such as ready-to-drink dairy-based beverages, smoothies, yogurt, etc. Usage levels range from 1% to 10%, depending on the dairy system and on the desired protein level in the finished product. Whey protein ingredients are typically powders that are dry blended and/or hydrated to be incorporated into the finished product. Nutrient content claims can be made when using whey proteins, depending on the level of protein in the final product. A protein level of 5g per serving allows for a “good source of protein” claim and a level of 10g per serving allows for an “excellent source of protein claim.” High-quality whey protein ingredients are bland in flavor and are easily added to dairy foods with little impact on flavor. Whey proteins also have many unique functional properties that will vary by type of ingredient and the type of processing involved in producing the dairy food or beverage.
Martin: Our patented 60% HCA fruit extract is an extremely application-friendly, 100% natural ingredient and great for use in dairy products. It is flavorless, odorless and colorless, as well as 100% soluble and heat stable.
Bevers: Our innovative combination of oat and palm oils has many applications in dairy products, as the structure and composition of dairy is particularly suited to this ingredient. Apart from its unique nutritional effect, the ingredient also has texture-enhancing properties. Dairy products made with it are often perceived as creamier and fuller, and are less prone to syneresis.
O’Neill: Applying inulin and/or oligofructose to most dairy foods is not hindered by major technical drawbacks. Their powder characteristics make them suitable to be dispersed or solubilized in the beginning of a dairy production process, before the homogenization and pasteurization stage. Because of their slightly sweet but bland taste, the final sensorial aspects of products are not influenced negatively. Sweetened dairy products such as many milk drinks, fermented milk drinks and yogurt- or fresh cheese-based products will benefit from these ingredients with regard to satiety and weight management. Further, the incorporation of these ingredients allows for the reduction of sugar and/or fat. Oligofructose is often added to fruited dairy products via the fruit preparation. The addition of oligofructose to diet fruit yogurts improves mouthfeel and offers a synergistic sweetness effect in combination with aspartame and/or acesulfame K and sucralose.
Q: What is the future for this category of foods and beverages?
Chaudhari: Our lifestyles show no sign of slowing down and with that comes an opportunity for manufacturers to develop foods and beverages that fit into this landscape. Not only will satiety-inducing products continue to be popular but foods and beverages that address mood enhancement, stress reduction, sleep disorders, cognitive function and joint pain will drive the category forward. Technology has made fortification a viable option for many nutrients that were once considered problematic due to their smell or taste. Within the past few years, consumer interest in promoting health has forced manufacturers to revisit challenging ingredients to figure out how to make them work. Moreover, consumers today are not simply looking for one or two added beneficial ingredients, they are looking for more complex products that are formulated to deliver a health benefit to their demographic or to address specific health conditions. This means not just overcoming the challenges of single ingredients, but overcoming the issues of combining and processing multiple ingredients. This means finding creative ways to make functional ingredients work in the type of products consumers are demanding and pushing nutrient integration into some environments that are not an easy fit.
Niba: Satiety products address the critical areas of obesity and weight management and also the associated disease conditions like metabolic syndrome, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Fortunately, food ingredient suppliers are now able to provide palatable and effective ingredients in foods that consumers like and enjoy, such as dairy products.
O’Shea: The satiety trend provides long-term potential for foods and beverages because it addresses the root causes of excessive consumption. The possible advantage of many foods and drinks with an intrinsic appetite suppressant ingredient or health benefit is that they will be seen as more natural, as opposed to a pharmaceutical approach, and we believe that there is a large part of the market that appreciates that attribute.
Davis: The future for satiety-inducing dairy foods and beverages is bright, since dairy as a category has a healthy reputation.
Sidebar: CLA is GRAS
FDA has issued a “no objection letter” to the GRAS (generally recognized as safe) petition for conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), a fatty acid hailed as a weight management ingredient for functional foods. The GRAS petition determined that CLA can safely be used in fluid and flavored milks, yogurts, milk-based meal replacements, meal replacement bars, soy milk and fruit juice applications.With GRAS approval for CLA, food companies are now in the position that they can add this ingredient to their products and make unique and marketable claims around reducing body fat and increasing lean muscle based on a body of clinical science that spans more than 20 years. Consumer interest in CLA has increased due to the accumulated research on the importance of body fat reduction and lean muscle mass with regards to maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
