Food Giants Look To Technology To Improve Future Products

(Reuters) - Food companies are using a growing arsenal of technological advancements to try to make what we eat closer to nature.

From sweeteners to proteins to texturizers, companies such as PepsiCo Inc (PEP.N), Cargill Inc CARG.UL and Burcon Nutrascience Corp (BU.TO) are employing an army of food scientists to help make the next generation of foods healthier and tastier, with a more understandable ingredient list.

"We are trying to make our products much more simple, much closer to nature," said Kerr Dow, Cargill's vice president of global food technology.

"What is great for technology is that that is really quite difficult," Dow said at the Reuters Food and Agriculture Summit, held this week in London, Paris, Singapore and Chicago.

Dow, who oversees about 1,000 "food technologists" that make ingredients and other applications for the food industry, said that 20 or 30 years ago, scientists were trying to change ingredients.

"Today all of our scientists are more interested in how do you take natural materials and make them easy to use in food products, which is just as difficult."

Cargill on Wednesday unveiled a new technology that improves the taste and texture of reduced calorie drinks. It works especially well with Truvia, a natural no-calorie sweetener Cargill developed with Coca-Cola Co (KO.N), Dow said.

Craig Binetti, president of DuPont's (DD.N) nutrition and biosciences unit, said such "innovation partnerships" abound, since about 92 percent of all food companies are "actively working" to improve the health profile of their products.

"So it's everybody if you think about it," said Binetti, whose company has partnerships with Nestle (NESN.VX) and Kellogg (K.N) and spends half of its $1.6 billion R&D budget on agriculture and nutrition.

INVESTING IN HEALTH

Global population growth and rising middle classes are driving the need for more high-quality food, which experts say will only come with technological advancement.

"By 2050 we will need 100 percent more food and 70 percent of that will come from new technology," said Tim Hassinger, vice president of the Crops Global Business Unit of Dow AgroSciences, which is part of Dow Chemical Co (DOW.N). "We believe that."

Burcon Nutrascience, a Vancouver-based research and development company, recently signed a deal with Archer Daniels Midland Co (ADM.N) to sell a soybean protein it developed that can boost the nutritional value of baby formula, sports drinks and juices without a "beany" taste or texture.

Johann Tergesen, Burcon's chief operating officer, told the summit that Wall Street recently "woke up" to the value of ingredient companies.

"I've received so many new, unsolicited inquiries from investment bankers," Tergesen said.

Here's the full story.

Study: Soda Associated With High Blood Pressure

Soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages such as fruit drinks are associated with higher blood pressure levels in adults, researchers report in Hypertension: Journal of the American Heart Association.

In the International Study of Macro/Micronutrients and Blood Pressure (INTERMAP), for every extra sugar-sweetened beverage drunk per day participants on average had significantly higher systolic blood pressure by 1.6 millimeters of mercury (mm Hg) and diastolic blood pressure higher by 0.8 mm Hg. This remained statistically significant even after adjusting for differences in body mass, researchers said. Anecdotal evidence suggests that Americans drink a lot of soda

Researchers found higher blood pressure levels in individuals who consumed more glucose and fructose, both sweeteners that are found in high-fructose corn syrup, the most common sugar sweetener used by the beverage industry. Higher blood pressure was more pronounced in people who consumed high levels of both sugar and sodium. They found no consistent association between diet soda intake and blood pressure levels. Those who drank diet soda had higher mean BMI than those who did not and lower levels of physical activity.

"This points to another possible intervention to lower blood pressure," said Paul Elliott, Ph.D., senior author and professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the School of Public Health at Imperial College London. "These findings lend support for recommendations to reduce the intake of sugar-sweetened beverages, as well as added sugars and sodium in an effort to reduce blood pressure and improve cardiovascular health."

Rare Cacao Beans Discovered in Peru

By Florence Fabrikant for The New York Times

DAN PEARSON was working in northern Peru two years ago with his stepson Brian Horsely, supplying gear and food to mining companies, when something caught his eye.

“We were in a hidden mountain valley of the Marañón River and saw some strange trees with football-size pods growing right out of their trunks,” Mr. Pearson said by telephone last week. “I knew nothing about cacao, but I learned that’s what it was.”

It was, he would learn after sending samples of seeds and leaves to the Agricultural Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture, one of the rarest, most prized varieties of cacao.

“The DNA of this material is pure Nacional,” said Dr. Lyndel Meinhardt, a scientist with the service. “These are very rare.”

Until the early 20th century, Nacional, a member of the Forastero family, one of the three main genetic categories of cacao, was widely grown in Ecuador, then the world’s largest cacao producer. But it succumbed to disease, which even cross-breeding could not resist. Some Nacional still grows in Ecuador, though most is not pure. At least one chocolate company, Kallari, says it uses it in blends.

But with the help of the Swiss chocolate expert Franz Zeigler, beans that Mr. Pearson and his stepson buy are being made into slabs of pure Nacional chocolate. “The magnitude of this find is bigger than anything I have known,” Mr. Zeigler said.

The chocolate is intense, with a floral aroma and a persistent mellow richness. Its lack of bitterness is remarkable.

One reason may be that Nacional cacao has a rare and precious characteristic: some of the beans are white, not the usual purple, and those from the Marañón Canyon are about 40 percent white. White beans, which Dr. Meinhardt said have fewer bitter anthocyanins, produce a more mellow-tasting, less acidic chocolate. Dr. Meinhardt said white beans are mutations that happen when trees are left undisturbed for hundreds of years.

A cacao pod is filled with sweet, whitish, viscous pulp embedded with seeds. Inside these seeds are the beans. You cannot easily tell which pods or seeds will have white beans, but Mr. Pearson said, without revealing more, that he has figured it out.

Chocolate made from 100 percent white beans is extremely expensive. (When roasted the beans turn brown and they are unrelated to “white chocolate.”)

Cacao is thought to have originated in the rain forests at the source of the Amazon and Orinoco Rivers and then gradually dispersed northward. What surprised Dr. Meinhardt the most about Mr. Pearson’s cacao was that it was growing at an altitude above 3,500 feet, while cacao rarely grows above 2,000 feet.

In the canyon, 186 farmers are growing pure Nacional. The beans are transported to a town several hours away, where they are dried, fermented and roasted, then sent to Lima and shipped to Switzerland. The chocolate is processed there by a company recommended by Mr. Zeigler, which Mr. Pearson did not want to name. The beans are made into what they call Fortunato No. 4, a 68-percent bittersweet couverture, a high-butterfat chocolate that’s easy to use.

They have 15 tons of it in slabs. A company in Switzerland and one each in Germany, Canada and the United States (Moonstruck Chocolatier, of Portland, Ore.) are making candies and bars with the chocolate.

At Moonstruck, the exclusive American retailer for the chocolate, Julian Rose, the chocolatier, is coating pure Nacional beans with pure Nacional chocolate. These will be introduced this weekend at the Fancy Food Show in San Francisco, and are sold as Fortunato Tumbled Beans at moonstruckchocolate.com ($12 for 3.5 ounces; bars of Peruvian Fortunato are $12 for 2 ounces). Mr. Rose said the flavor of this chocolate is so refined that it does not need vanilla, commonly added to chocolate, to round it out.

At the Institute of Culinary Education in New York, Michelle Tampakis, the director of advanced pastry studies, said the chocolate was extremely smooth when melted, with a full-bodied, nutty flavor that was not bitter.

Mr. Zeigler, who visited the canyon with Mr. Pearson last year, said he had a “Jurassic Park feeling” about the experience. “And the discovery of the white beans tops the whole thing,” he said. “I have no doubt this chocolate will be up there with the very best in the world.”

Researchers In UK Developing "Smart Plastic" To Detect Freshness Of Food

Researchers from Strathclyde University in Glasgow are working on indicators made from "intelligent plastics" that change colour when food loses its freshness. They hope to have a commercially viable product available soon which will improve food safety and cut waste.

The project is being supported with £325,000 (about $504,000) in funding from the Scottish Enterprise Proof of Concept programme.

UK households are estimated to throw out about 8.3 million tonnes of food each year - most of which could be eaten. It is also thought that there are about one million cases of food poisoning annually in Britain.

The Strathclyde University team hopes new smart wrapping will alert consumers when food is about to lose its freshness because it has broken or damaged packaging, has exceeded its "best before" date or has been poorly refrigerated.

Freshness indicators currently used across the food industry usually take the form of labels inserted in a package but these come at a significant cost. Strathclyde researchers are looking to create a new type of indicator which is part of the wrapping itself and subsequently much cheaper.

The indicator it is working on will change colour when the freshness of the food deteriorates past a certain level. It will be used as part of a form of food packaging known as modified atmosphere packaging, which keeps food in specially-created conditions that prolong its shelf life.

Professor Andrew Mills, who is leading the project, told the BBC: "At the moment, we throw out far too much food, which is environmentally and economically damaging.

"Modified atmosphere packaging is being used increasingly to contain the growth of organisms which spoil food but the costs of the labels currently used with it are substantial. We are aiming to eliminate this cost with new plastics for the packaging industry.

"We hope that this will reduce the risk of people eating food which is no longer fit for consumption and help prevent unnecessary waste of food. We also hope it will have a direct and positive impact on the meat and seafood industries."

The Strathclyde team believes its work could resolve potential confusion about the different significances of "best before" dates and "sell-by" dates.

It could also help to highlight the need for food to be stored in refrigerators which are properly sealed.

Another Stroke Culprit: Fried Fish

A wide swath of the South has long been known as the “stroke belt” because it has higher rates of stroke and other cardiovascular illnesses than the rest of the country. Now researchers are suggesting one culprit: fried fish.

Fish contain omega-3 fatty acids, which help reduce the risk for stroke, and the American Heart Associationrecommends at least two fish meals per week. But deep-fat frying destroys these natural fatty acids and replaces them with cooking oil.

Scientists writing online in the journal Neurology analyzed the diets of more than 21,000 people nationwide. They found that people in eight stroke belt states — North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas and Louisiana — ate a three-ounce serving of fish an average of twice a week, roughly the same as people elsewhere. But they were 32 percent more likely to have that fish fried. Nationally, African-Americans ate more fish meals than whites, and twice as much fried fish.

Read the full story in The New York Times.