Agricultural commodities like oil and wheat can rise unpredictably and crush your bottom line. With high ingredient prices manufacturers need new cost saving strategies to protect their margins. One of the best methods to reduce and control formula costs is to replace ingredients that are expensive or have unpredictable prices. New functional ingredient innovations are providing manufacturers with better ways to reduce and control formula costs without sacrificing quality. For many manufacturers edible oils are the largest contributor to cost and pricing uncertainty. Now many are turning to oil and fat mimetics to replace oil and fat in their formulas as a way to reduce costs and hedge themselves against volatile ingredient markets.  

Fat mimetics are used to replace oil and fat in a wide variety of foods. They are designed to mimic the mouthfeel, texture and cooking or baking properties that oils and fats contribute to different foods. Some fat mimetics can be used to reduce formula costs when they cost less than the oil or fat they are replacing. Also, the cost of mimetics will not rise and fall like the cost of oils and fats. Newer and better fat replacers are allowing manufacturers to reformulate without sacrificing the eating qualities of their products.

Fat mimetics can be derived from proteins, hydrophobic fat substitutes, carbohydrates and emulsifiers. Examples of hydrophobic fat substitutes include Olestra and Salatrim, these are manufactured by chemical reactions between sugars and fatty acids or by the modification of triglycerides. Simplease is a protein based fat mimetic used to replace fat. Its round shape and creamy mouthfeel help provide many characteristics associated with fat. Carbohydrate based fat mimetics use their ability to bind water to function as a fat replacer. Some of the most common carbohydrate based fat mimetics are pectins, starches, gums and fibers. These ingredients are usually combined with water to replace oil or fat on a one-to-one volume basis. For instance one part fat mimetic and seven parts water will replace eight parts oil. In a formula with 16 parts total oil this would represent a 50% reduction in oil. Starch based fat mimetics usually consist of modified starches produced by a chemical hydrolyzation or chemical substitution. Starches are usually tailor made for each application to match desired properties and mouthfeel. Generally a number of these ingredients might be combined to meet the necessary characteristics in the reduced oil or fat formulations.

Despite the many solutions currently available to replace oil and fat in food products, all of them have limitations.  The limitations are in the form of cost, ease of use, shelf-life, regulatory concerns, taste, texture, percentage of fat they are able to replace, and/or food applications for which they are suitable. Thus, there is still a quality deficit with currently available ingredients used for making reduced fat and reduced calorie foods that are affordable and which have the same quality as full-fat and full-calorie products.

New varieties of oil and fat mimetic ingredients are being made from processed plant cell wall materials. Fiberstar Inc. of the USA offers Citri-Fi™, a natural food ingredient which functions as an oil or fat replacer in a variety of applications. Citri-Fi products have a smooth mouthfeel, high water holding capacity, and tightly bind water and oil over time so products stay fresher for longer. Citri-Fi products perform exceptionally well to replace fat in bakery. Manufacturers use the product to replace 10% to 50% of formula oil or fat to reduce costs and improve nutrition without affecting product quality. Cost calculations show Citri-Fi will almost always reduce formula costs because Citri-Fi and extra water cost less than the oil they replace.

Citri-Fi is a multifunctional food ingredient made from orange pulp. Citri-Fi contains both soluble and insoluble fiber and protein. Fiberstar processes Citri-Fi in a way that expands the internal surface area of the fiber. This enables Citri-Fi to employ multiple bonding mechanisms; liophilic bonding of protein to fat, hydrogen bonding of soluble and insoluble fiber to water, and entrapment and surface tension forces exerted by the expanded fiber matrix. These physio-chemical properties allow Citri-Fi to bind and hold more oil, fat and water through cooking, baking, freezing and a products shelf life than any comparable ingredient while providing excellent mouthfeel and texture.

When using Citri-Fi in baked goods the objective is to find the optimum combination of cost savings, quality, taste, texture and nutritional improvement. Reformulation for cost benefits can only work when product qualities are acceptable, but the benefits of lowered costs and improved nutrition can be achieved with excellent results using Citri-Fi.