Plant-based dairy: Clean label or 'curdled'?
Technology manager of beverages at TIC Gums, Dan Grazaitis, gave a presentation on the challenges of using clean label functional ingredients.
Catching up with FoodNavigator afterwards Grazaitis said the rise of plant-based beverages is “only good news” for hydrocolloid ingredients from acacia gum to carageenan which are essential for their stabilising and emulsifying properties.
Nevertheless, Grazaitis said that consumers’ ever-growing demand for natural and clean-label was leading some manufacturers to eschew them.
“When dairy milk gets old it curdles and that’s bad and you’re told from a kid to not drink that. Plant-based milk without the stabilisers in there will do the same thing, it will curdle. For some companies, separation is natural and [they] are saying ‘Just shake it and drink it’ but mentally it’s still hard to overcome that separation.”
For manufacturers not ready to tell consumers to ‘shake and drink’, TIC Gum’s Ticaloid Pro 181 AG emulsifies and stabilises the oils in non-dairy drinks such as almond, coconut or cashew.