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SimPure™ Functional Label-Friendly Starches: Simple ingredients & Pure functionality.

Cargill & FSL’s team of food science professionals have been focused on the development and use of starches in the food industry for over 30 years. Today, we are helping customers achieve their product formulation goals with a push for simple recipes and recognizable ingredients. This has introduced new challenges, but our growing portfolio of label-friendly tools, coupled with a fresh approach to formulation enables us to create consumer-pleasing products.

As consumer preferences have shifted towards simple labels and more familiar sources, food and beverages manufacturers have faced the challenges of replacing modified starch. Our expanding SimPure portfolio addresses that need.

SimPure functional label friendly starches mimic the functionality of modifies starches while delivering the label-friendly ingredient that consumers desire.

SimPure benefits:

  • Label friendly plant-based product
  • Neutral flavour profile
  • Superior viscosity
  • Good mouthfeel and texture

 

The SimPure portfolio of waxy corn starches offers functionality in mild to high processing conditions, from pasteurization and gentle cooking to homogenization, UHT or retort processing. They deliver rich, satisfying mouthfeel and comparable viscosity to modified starches.

The SimPure portfolio of potato starches are designed for mild processing conditions, including meat, meat alternatives, culinary/convenience applications and more. They offer superior viscosity and sensory performance, without compromising on taste, texture or appearance.

Q & A WITH CARGILL ON THEIR LABEL FRIENDLY NATIVE STARCHES

How is Cargill helping customers with label-friendly formulation?
We’re approaching the label-friendly challenge from two angles. First, we’re investing in research and development, charging all of our teams to take a creative look at the botanical sources available to us. For example, within our starch development group, we’ve gone back to the basics, studying and quantifying all of the attributes of each individual starch in our portfolio. By gaining greater insight into the structure and unique properties of each of our starches, we are learning how to get more from them.

We’re coupling that work with our extensive formulation expertise, partnering with our customers to re-think their recipes. We’re challenging them to evaluate every ingredient in a recipe. Oftentimes, we find their recipes include ingredients that aren’t actually,
contributing to the final product.

Can native starches stand up to processing demands?
As an industry, we’ve always assumed that native starches weren’t as robust as modified starches. However, since Cargill began experimenting with different starch blends from various botanical sources, we’ve found native starches can do more than we ever imagined.

Can you give an example of what you’ve learned about starches?
We’ve realized that our native starches can do more than we ever thought possible, especially if we blend two or three together. We’re also using basic processing techniques – like controlling moisture and heat – to create more robust starch solutions that better withstand harsh processing conditions.

When will customers see these new starch solutions?
We have a number of products already on the market, with more on the way. Customers can find them under our new SimPure™ brand. The SimPure line of functional native starches offer food and beverage manufacturers solutions that deliver additional functionality, such as greater process tolerance, shelf life or storage stability. A perfect example is the most recent addition to our starch offerings, which was designed specifically for culinary and convenience products, such as frozen-ready meals.

What about cost?
As a general rule, label-friendly formulations are more expensive. Even if you’re using native starches, you often need to use more. They’re just not as robust as the modified starches we relied on for so long.

Consumers may be willing to pay a little more for a label-friendly product, but especially if we’re in a reformulating situation, companies want to have the same cost structure. We understand that reality, and that’s where our formulation expertise and broad ingredient portfolio come into play. We have the ability to look at an entire recipe and find cost-savings. We also keep cost-in-use realities in mind as we develop new ingredient solutions. It is cost-competitive to other label-friendly alternatives, but offers significant performance advantages.

 

Looking further ahead we are hard at work exploring the benefits of additional starches. We also see great potential in using things like water and temperature to expand the functional benefits of many native starches, without impacting consumer acceptance. We are all here to support you to fit our product in your clean label product recipes.