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Cow’s Milk Is Making a Comeback (and Ultrafiltered Milk Is Part of the Story)

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For years, the story around milk felt settled. Traditional cow’s milk was in decline, plant-based alternatives were on the rise, and consumer preferences seemed to be shifting permanently.

But lately, the numbers are telling a different story. Across the U.S., cow-based milk is showing signs of a measurable comeback, and it is happening at the same time ultrafiltered milk is becoming a more visible, more discussed, and more deliberately purchased category. Taken together, these trends suggest something bigger than a passing moment. Consumers are re-evaluating what they want from “milk,” and dairy is responding with products that fit modern priorities.

Dairy Milk Sales Are Rising Again

After decades of decline, dairy milk has started gaining ground again in recent reporting. According to NielsenIQ data referenced by multiple industry outlets, U.S. dairy milk sales rose about 2% in 2024, while whole milk sales rose roughly 3.2%. That matters because it is not a tiny fluctuation. It is part of a broader pattern of stabilization and growth that runs directly against what the industry expected for years.

At the same time, several market reports have pointed out that plant-based milk sales have softened. In some cases, the category has posted multiple years of unit declines even as it remains a major segment overall. This is not the end of plant-based milk, but it is a shift in momentum.

Why Consumers Are Coming Back to Cow’s Milk

So what is driving the return?

Protein has become one of the biggest consumer priorities

Protein is one of the most dominant nutrition trends in the U.S. right now, and milk has a built-in advantage. It is familiar, widely trusted, and naturally contains a meaningful amount of complete protein without requiring special formulation.

Plant-based milks can compete here, but many mainstream products still contain little protein unless they are designed specifically for that purpose. When they are, they often come with higher price points and more complex ingredient decks. For many consumers, cow’s milk feels like the simplest answer.

Price is playing a larger role in everyday purchasing

Food inflation has changed shopping behavior across nearly every category. And when consumers start comparing value, dairy often wins.

Multiple retail and grocery industry analyses have noted that conventional cow’s milk is typically more affordable than many plant-based alternatives, especially in the premium plant-based segment. For consumers trying to manage grocery spend without giving up nutrition, dairy milk is an easy staple to return to.

Whole milk’s growth reflects changing nutrition attitudes

One of the most interesting details in the “dairy comeback” story is that whole milk is leading the growth.

According to NielsenIQ data cited in 2024 dairy trend coverage, whole milk sales rose around 3.2%. That aligns with a broader shift away from the low-fat era. Many consumers now associate whole milk with satiety, taste, and being less “diet culture” than skim or heavily modified products. In other words, milk is not just being re-adopted. It is being re-adopted in its most traditional form.

Taste and performance still matter

Plant-based milks have improved dramatically, but cow’s milk still has unmatched everyday versatility.

Consumers continue to choose dairy milk because it foams reliably, performs well in coffee, behaves predictably in cooking and baking, and has a neutral flavor profile that works in a wider range of applications. Sometimes the simplest explanation is still the right one. People like how milk works.

Ultrafiltered Milk: Not a Niche Anymore

While conventional milk is regaining ground, ultrafiltered milk is rising for a different reason.

Ultrafiltered milk is produced using membrane filtration, which concentrates protein while removing some water and lactose. The result is a milk that is typically higher in protein and lower in sugar than conventional milk, and often lactose-free or lactose-reduced depending on the brand and process.

This category has moved from specialty shelves into the mainstream. Brands like Fairlife helped establish consumer awareness, but the bigger story is what is happening behind the scenes.

According to Dairy Foods reporting, processors and cooperatives have been expanding ultrafiltered milk production capacity, including facility expansions specifically designed to increase UF output. That kind of investment usually reflects sustained demand, not a short-lived trend.

Why Consumers Are Paying Attention to Ultrafiltered Milk

Ultrafiltered milk is appealing because it fits several modern consumer priorities at once.

Higher protein without changing habits

Consumers do not need to learn a new product category. They can keep buying “milk,” but get a higher-protein version of it. That matters in a market where consumers want functional nutrition but still crave familiarity.

Lower sugar and lactose-friendly options

Ultrafiltered milk is often positioned as lower sugar and easier to digest. For consumers who are lactose sensitive, UF milk can feel like a more natural and satisfying alternative than lactose-free conventional milk, even though both can serve similar needs.

Premium positioning that consumers are willing to pay for

Ultrafiltered milk usually costs more than conventional milk. But it is priced like a functional product, not a commodity. With so many consumers buy protein bars, electrolyte drinks, and functional snacks without hesitation, ultrafiltered milk fits neatly into the same mindset.

The Bigger Shift: Milk Is Becoming a Functional Beverage

If you zoom out, it’s not just “dairy versus plant-based.” It is a shift in how consumers think about milk in general. Milk is no longer treated like a default grocery item. It is being evaluated like a performance product. Consumers are increasingly asking:

  • How much protein does it have?
  • How much sugar is in it?
  • Is it lactose-free?
  • Does it foam well?
  • Does it taste clean?
  • Is it worth the price?

Cow’s milk is regaining ground because it checks more of these boxes than people expected, especially when nutrition, cost, and versatility are weighed together. Ultrafiltered milk is growing because it offers an upgraded version of dairy that feels aligned with modern health and wellness priorities.

What This Means for Brands and Product Developers

From a product development and commercialization standpoint, this is an important moment. Dairy is no longer competing on tradition alone. It is competing through:

  • functional nutrition (protein-forward, lactose-friendly, lower sugar)
  • processing innovation (ultrafiltration and improved performance)
  • premiumization (higher price points justified by clear benefits)
  • sensory performance (taste, texture, and usability)

At the same time, plant-based milk is not standing still. Plant-based brands are responding with better taste, better texture, and more protein-forward formulas. This is not a winner-take-all market. It is a market where consumers are assigning different milks to different roles, and cow’s milk is reclaiming roles it was expected to lose.

The Bottom Line

Cow-based milk is not just surviving. It is gaining measurable momentum again. And ultrafiltered milk is not a passing fad. It is part of a broader consumer shift toward milk products that deliver more protein, less sugar, and better functionality, without requiring people to abandon familiar habits.

Milk is no longer a default purchase. It is a decision. And the brands that win will be the ones that make that decision feel obvious.

How to Reduce Sugar Without Compromising Taste or Texture

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The Challenge of Cutting Sugar in Food Products

Reducing added sugar is a top priority in food development today, but it’s easier said than done. Sugar doesn’t just make foods sweet – it plays many roles in a formula. It contributes to flavor complexity, affects mouthfeel and moisture, participates in browning reactions, acts as a bulking and preserving agent, and even adds volume and lightness in baked goods​. Take all that away, and you risk ending up with a cookie that’s pale and rock-hard, or a beverage that tastes flat and thin. No wonder food makers find sugar reduction so challenging – you have to preserve taste and texture while removing an ingredient that was doing a lot of heavy lifting.

Yet the pressure to cut sugar is growing. Health guidelines urge limiting added sugars to <10% of calories​, and governments and retailers have set sugar reduction targets across product categories​. Consumers, too, are scrutinizing labels for lower sugar options. The good news is that with smart formulation strategies, it is possible to reduce sugars significantly without compromising sensory quality – even in notoriously tricky products like baked goods, beverages, cheesecakes, and gummies. Let’s explore how, drawing on the latest food science and some real-world success stories.

Natural vs. Synthetic Sweeteners: Finding the Right Balance

One of the most common approaches to reduce sugar is replacing it with alternative sweeteners. These range from natural extracts to high-intensity artificial compounds. Choosing the right sweetener (or blend) is critical, as each comes with its own taste profile, functionality, and consumer perception.

Natural high-intensity sweeteners (from plant sources) are very popular in today’s market. Stevia extract, for example, is derived from the Stevia plant and can be 200–300 times sweeter than sugar. It provides sweetness with zero calories, but often has a bitter or licorice aftertaste and a slower onset of sweetness. Monk fruit (luo han guo) extract is another natural option, around 150–200 times sweeter than sugar, with a fruity aftertaste. Sweet proteins like thaumatin and brazzein (from tropical fruits) are emerging as well – they can intensely sweeten without adding calories, though they may alter flavor slightly due to their protein nature. Rare sugars like allulose and tagatose are gaining attention too. These are actual sugars (carbohydrates) found in nature in small amounts. Allulose is only ~70% as sweet as sucrose but mimics sugar’s mouthfeel and browning properties while contributing almost no calories. Tagatose is about as sweet as sugar and can caramelize, but has fewer calories and a low glycemic impact. Because these come from natural sources (or are identical to substances found in nature), they often appeal to consumers seeking cleaner labels.

On the other hand, synthetic sweeteners (artificially produced) have been used for decades and are very potent. Sucralose, for instance, is an artificial sweetener ~600 times sweeter than sugar. It has a fairly clean sugar-like taste and is heat-stable (good for baking), but some consumers report a slight aftertaste and others avoid it for being “artificial.” Aspartame (200× sweeter) and saccharin (300×) are older synthetic sweeteners; aspartame’s sweetness is clean but it breaks down at high heat and in long storage, while saccharin has a known metallic aftertaste at higher levels. Acesulfame-K (ace-K) is often combined with other sweeteners to improve taste synergy. These artificial sweeteners can replace sweetness intensity very effectively – often only tiny amounts are needed – but they do nothing for bulk or texture, and consumer perception can be a hurdle. Many shoppers today prefer to see “no artificial sweeteners” on labels​. In fact, in one industry poll, 70% of food brands said they plan to reduce sugar by using natural sweeteners, versus only 20% using artificials​. This reflects the current market sentiment: “natural” carries less stigma​, even though natural sweeteners have their own challenges (aftertastes, supply, cost).

Ultimately, no single sweetener is perfect. Successful sugar reduction often means blending sweeteners to get the best of each and mask the negatives. For example, a beverage might use a mix of stevia and erythritol: the stevia provides high sweetness while erythritol (a natural sugar alcohol) adds mild sweetness plus bulk and a cooling effect that can improve mouthfeel. In a diet soda, a small amount of sugar or allulose might be kept to round out the taste, alongside sucralose and ace-K to lift sweetness. The goal is to replicate sugar’s temporal profile (onset, peak, lingering) and flavor as closely as possible. By combining sweeteners, formulators can create a more sugar-like sweetness and often use each at lower levels (reducing any single sweetener’s off-taste). For instance, stevia and monk fruit together can cancel out some of each other’s aftertastes, and adding a pinch of salt or a dash of vanilla can further smooth the sweetness profile.

Maintaining Mouthfeel and Texture with Bulking Agents

Replacing sugar’s sweetness is only half the battle – what about its bulk and textural contributions? In baked goods and candies, sugar often makes up a large portion of the solids. Remove it and you remove volume and weight. The product may turn out smaller, harder, or drier because there was literally “less stuff” in the mix. That’s why bulking agents are usually added when using high-intensity sweeteners. As one review notes, sugar replacement “requires using both alternative sweeteners and bulking agents” in most cases​. The bulkers restore the lost volume and influence texture, moisture, and even browning.

Common bulking ingredients include polyols (sugar alcohols like maltitol, sorbitol, xylitol, erythritol) and dietary fibers. Polyols provide sweetness (typically 30–70% as sweet as sugar) and a similar mouthfeel to sugar. They are frequently used in sugar-free candies, chocolates, and baked goods. For example, sugar-free cookies might use maltitol or isomalt along with a bit of sucralose. These polyols contribute bulk and help retain moisture so the cookie stays soft, while sucralose bumps up the sweetness. One caveat: many polyols can cause gastrointestinal upset if consumed in large amounts, so levels must be managed and often a mix is used to stay below tolerance thresholds.

Dietary fibers and resistant starches are another important class of bulkers. Ingredients like inulin, fructo-oligosaccharides (FOS), polydextrose, and oat fiber can replace sugar’s bulk without adding digestible carbs. They tend to be far less sweet (inulin has a slight sweetness ~10% of sugar’s), but they excel at improving body and moistness. In a reduced-sugar cake or muffin, adding soluble fibers can help mimic the sticky tender crumb that sugar usually provides. In fact, studies have shown that bakery products can withstand a decent sugar reduction if bulk and moisture are compensated. For example, muffins with a 25% reduction in sugar (and fat) plus added fiber were liked just as much as the full-sugar version​. Fibers can also have bonus benefits: they may improve the nutritional profile (higher fiber content) and appeal to health-conscious consumers.

The combination of high-intensity sweeteners + bulking agents remains the workhorse strategy for sugar reduction across many foods​. As an illustration, a no-sugar-added cheesecake might use polydextrose (a soluble fiber) and a sugar alcohol syrup to replace the volume and creamy mouthfeel normally provided by sugar, while using a tiny amount of sucralose or stevia for sweetness. The result can be a cheesecake that is just as indulgent and creamy in texture, with sweetness nearly identical to the original, but significantly less sugar. (In fact, The Cheesecake Factory’s popular “Low-Licious” cheesecake achieves this by using a fiber and sweetener blend instead of sucrose.) Likewise, in gummy candies, formulators often replace corn syrup and sugar with a mix of polyols and gelatin adjustments – the gelatin or gelling agent might be increased slightly to account for any changes in set, and glycerin or polyols add back some of sugar’s humectancy so the gummies stay chewy and don’t crystalize.

Flavor Modulation: Enhancing Sweetness and Masking Off-Notes

Another set of tools to conquer sugar reduction involves flavor technology. When you reduce or replace sugar, the flavor balance of the product inevitably changes. You may notice more of other tastes (like bitterness or sourness) that sugar used to mask. The overall sweetness intensity might drop, or the timing might feel “off” (perhaps the sweetness comes on too late, or doesn’t linger as long). To tackle this, product developers use flavor modulators and enhancers.

Sweetness modulators are specialized flavor compounds (often secret blends from flavor houses) that amplify the perception of sweetness. They are not necessarily sweet by themselves, but they interact with our taste receptors or brain perception to make a given level of sweetener taste sweeter. For example, certain aroma compounds can enhance sweetness via a cross-modal sensory effect: adding a pleasant vanilla or fruity aroma can trick the brain into perceiving more sweetness than is actually there​. One scientific review noted that adding congruent aromas significantly increased perceived sweet intensity, thanks to our brain combining smell and taste signals​. This “multi-sensory integration” approach has been widely used to enhance saltiness (e.g. cheese aroma to boost savory perception in low-salt foods) and is now being explored for sugar reduction as well​.

Flavor masking is equally important. High-intensity sweeteners can bring along off-flavors: stevia has that herbal bitterness, monk fruit can have an overripe fruity note, acesulfame-K has a slight bitter aftertaste, and sucralose can taste slightly metallic to some people. Masking agents – often bitter blockers or enhancers that round out the flavor – can be added. For instance, a bit of glycyrrhizin (from licorice root) is sometimes used at low levels to mask bitterness and add a subtle background sweetness. Similarly, malic acid or citric acid might be used in a reduced-sugar candy to sharpen the flavor profile, distracting from any lingering aftertaste of sweeteners and providing a more “vibrant” flavor that compensates for lower sweetness. In chocolate products, where sugar also affects perceived bitterness of cocoa, reducing sugar might make the chocolate taste more bitter; one solution is to increase the vanilla or add a dairy note to soften bitterness when sugar is taken out.

We can also adjust the taste balance with other basic tastes. A tiny pinch of salt in a sweet product can actually enhance certain sweet flavor notes and suppress bitterness. In beverages, adjusting the acid level is key – many full-sugar drinks (sodas, juices) have high acidity to balance the heavy sweetness; if you cut the sugar, that same acid level might overpower the drink. So, developers often reduce the acid or use smoother acids when they lower sugar, to keep the sweet-sour balance pleasing. Sometimes a touch of umami can be used in a sweet matrix to boost body and sweetness perception (for example, mushroom or tomato extracts at imperceptible levels can round out the flavor of a low-sugar savory sauce or ketchup, making it taste fuller despite less sugar).

Bottom line: By thoughtfully using flavor modifiers – whether it’s adding aroma, using sweetness enhancers, or tweaking salt/acid – you can maintain a satisfying flavor in reduced-sugar products. These techniques help ensure that even if the numeric sugar content drops, the perceived sweetness and overall flavor enjoyment remain high.

Technique Spotlight: Gradual Sugar Reduction

Not all sugar reduction has to happen overnight or in one jump to a new formula. An effective strategy, especially for established products, is gradual sugar reduction over time. Instead of swapping sugar out all at once, the sugar level is lowered in small steps across multiple iterations so that consumers slowly adapt to a less sweet taste. This approach leverages the idea that our taste preferences can recalibrate. If you reduce sweetness by say 5-10% and do it in a stealthy way, many people won’t even notice a difference, and their palate adjusts. Later, you can cut another few percent, and so on.

This stepwise reduction strategy has been widely used in salt reduction efforts (e.g. gradually lowering salt in bread by a fraction each year). For sugar, it’s starting to gain traction. Public health bodies have suggested manufacturers trim sugar gradually – one report noted the UK’s health authorities recommended up to a 20% sugar reduction achieved incrementally to avoid detection​. In one case, a chocolate milk was reformulated in two small stages and managed to cut about 13% of its added sugar in a year without consumers noticing the change (by splitting the reduction into two steps)​. The same principle could be extended to beverages and even some foods, especially those that are homogeneously sweet (like drinks or yogurt). It’s trickier for products that have discrete sweet bits (imagine a granola with sweet clusters – if you reduce sugar in the clusters, people might notice the difference more). But for many processed foods, gradual reduction is a clever way to achieve lower sugar goals with minimal backlash.

One thing to keep in mind with the gradual approach: you’re not replacing sugar with anything new, just slowly removing it, so you must ensure that functionality isn’t lost. Often this works best when only sweetness (and maybe a bit of mouthfeel) is the issue, and you can tolerate a slight change. For instance, in a sweetened yogurt or a beverage, a 5% drop in sugar likely won’t make it too thin or change the preservation, so it can be done without adding other bulking agents – you just make the product a tad less sweet overall. Over time, consumers’ preference shifts and they become accustomed to the new baseline. Some experts even argue that we need to reduce overall sweetness in our diets, not just swap sugars for high-intensity sweeteners​. By gradually lowering sweetness, we help retrain the sweet tooth of the consumer population. This is a more holistic, health-driven view: rather than delivering the same level of sweetness with alternative sweeteners, we slowly guide people to enjoy less-sweet products. Of course, this requires a long-term commitment and consistency. But it can pay off in products that boast “now x% less sugar than 2 years ago – and just as delicious!” without ever shocking the consumer’s taste buds at any single reformulation.

Case Studies: Sugar Reduction in Action

Let’s look at how some specific product categories tackle sugar reduction while keeping quality high:

  • Baked Goods (Cakes, Cookies, Muffins): Baked items rely on sugar for sweetness, browning, moisture retention, and tenderness. A successful reformulation often uses a combination approach. For example, a reduced-sugar muffin might replace 30% of the sugar with a blend of stevia (for sweetness) and soluble corn fiber (for bulk and moisture). The remaining real sugar provides browning and some humectancy. In one study, researchers found that muffins with 25% less sugar (and added fiber) were just as liked as full-sugar versions​– a testament to smart formulation. Cookies can be trickier because sugar contributes to spread and crispness. Some cookie reformulations use polyols like erythritol or maltitol to replace sugar gram-for-gram. These polyols brown less, so a dash of molasses or a touch of extra baking time might be used to get the color right. Cakes and brownies often can handle high-intensity sweeteners if you add back bulk with applesauce, yogurt, or fibers. For instance, a chocolate cake might use allulose for half the sugar (maintaining moistness and browning) and sucralose for the rest of the sweetness, yielding a cake that’s just as rich and sweet for a fraction of the sugar. The key in baked goods is balancing the structure – too much removal and you get collapse or dryness, so often only a partial replacement (50–75%) is targeted unless you radically rework the recipe.
  • Beverages: Drinks are one of the easiest places to swap sugars because they don’t have structural requirements. That’s why we have so many diet sodas and sugar-free drinks. However, taste and mouthfeel are paramount. Simply dropping sugar and adding a high-intensity sweetener can leave a beverage tasting “hollow” or overly thin. Beverage reformulators often use a bit of viscosity agent or mouthfeel enhancer to mimic sugar’s body. For example, some reduced-sugar juices add a small amount of natural gum or pectin to give a thicker mouthfeel that sugar usually contributed. In carbonated drinks, allulose or glycerol can provide a slight syrupy texture to replace the lost sugar solids. Blends of sweeteners work particularly well in beverages: many zero-sugar sodas use sucralose + acesulfame-K (the two together taste better than either alone). Newer natural options use stevia + monk fruit + erythritol: stevia for sweet punch, erythritol for a sugar-like upfront sweetness and a cooling effect that counteracts any stevia linger, and monk fruit to round it out. The challenge with beverages is often aftertaste – there’s no matrix to hide it. So a lot of beverage sugar reduction focuses on flavor pairing (e.g. using stevia in a lemon tea, where any slight aftertaste blends with the lemon notes). Some brands choose to keep a small fraction of real sugar in the formula to carry the initial taste and use sweeteners to top it up; this often gives a more authentic profile. For instance, a “50% less sugar” iced tea might have half the usual sugar plus stevia to reach full sweetness – consumers get the natural sugar taste upfront and likely won’t detect the stevia’s contribution as separate.
  • Cheesecakes and Creamy Desserts: Rich desserts like cheesecake present a special case. They are high in fat and have a dense, creamy texture. Sugar in a cheesecake sweetens the cheese mixture and slightly affects its firmness and freezing point (for frozen cheesecakes). Formulators have found success using polyols and fibers here. A no-added-sugar cheesecake can be made with maltitol or lactitol replacing sucrose; these sugar alcohols behave similarly in the batter, keeping the texture soft and creamy. In one commercial example, polydextrose (a low-calorie fiber) was used to replace sugar bulk in a cheesecake, combined with sucralose for sweetness – the result had the same luscious texture and taste, with over 40% sugar reduction. Because cheesecakes are not meant to be overly sweet to begin with (they rely on cream cheese flavor), they tolerate high-intensity sweeteners well as long as the aftertaste is managed. A bit of vanilla extract and a touch of real sugar (or allulose) can mask any off-notes. Also, since sugar normally helps soften the tang of cream cheese, recipes might add a pinch more salt or use a slightly less acidic cheese base when sugar is removed, to keep the flavor balanced. The crust is another consideration: a traditional graham cracker crust has sugar, but you can replace that with finely ground nuts or use a reduced-sugar cookie crumb to cut sugar further while still providing a satisfying base. Overall, cheesecakes can be made with minimal sugar and still wow the consumer – as evidenced by several keto-friendly cheesecake products on the market that people swear taste as good as regular!
  • Gummies and Confections: Sugar reduction in candy is an art of its own. Gummies, jellies, and chewy candies usually combine sucrose with glucose syrup to create the right gel structure and chew. When you pull out the sugar, you must replace both sweetness and the set of the gel. Many sugar-free gummies use maltitol or isomalt combined with gelatin or agar to get a similar texture – these polyols enable the candy to still have a chew, and they contribute to the osmotic pressure (helping preserve the candy from microbial growth, much like sugar would). An interesting case study comes from a 2021 scientific study on gelatin gummies: researchers reduced the sugar in a gummy formulation by injecting tiny air bubbles into the candy (aeration) to reduce density by 23–38%. The aerated gummies had significantly less sugar per bite, yet tasters noted no difference in flavor or chewiness compared to the full-sugar version​. The micro-bubbles increased the release of aroma and taste compounds, so the gummies still tasted just as sweet and flavorful even with fewer actual sugar calories​. This is a great example of thinking outside the box: using a structural technique (creating an airy foam-like gummy) to cut sugar without needing any new sweetener at all. For more traditional approaches, consider hard candies: they rely on sugar syrup crystallization, but newer formulations use isomalt (which naturally resists crystallization) to make sugar-free lollipops and lozenges that look and feel identical to the sugary kind. Chocolate confections often replace sugar with erythritol or fiber. A sugar-free chocolate bar needs a bulking sweetener that can crystallize to give that snap – erythritol is commonly used, though it can impart a cooling sensation. To counter that, manufacturers might add a bit of milk powder or an alternative sweetener that doesn’t cool as much. The result is a chocolate that is perhaps slightly less sweet, but very close to the original profile. Even chewing gum is a form of confection: modern sugar-free gums use xylitol or sorbitol to replace sugar, not just for sweetness but because these polyols have a gentle cooling effect and a pleasant mouthfeel that works well in gum. In fact, consumers often prefer the mouthfeel of xylitol-sweetened gum over sugar-sweetened gum nowadays (plus it has oral health benefits). All these examples show that whether it’s a gummy bear or a chocolate truffle, sugar can be reduced or eliminated if you intelligently mix alternative sweeteners, bulking agents, and sometimes novel processing methods.

Patric Food & Beverage Development: Expertise in Sweet Success

Navigating the complexities of sugar reduction requires a deep understanding of food science and a creative touch. This is where Patric Food & Beverage Development excels. We’ve helped numerous food makers and entrepreneurs reformulate products to cut sugars while elevating taste and texture – turning what could be a formulation nightmare into a market-winning innovation. Our team knows the functional roles of sugar inside and out, and we draw on a toolbox of solutions: from natural sweetener systems and soluble fibers to proprietary flavor modulators and texture enhancers. We understand that each product is unique. The strategy that works for a beverage (perhaps a stevia-allulose sweetening system with a hint of citrus oil to boost sweetness) will differ from what a cheesecake needs (maybe a polyol-fiber blend and a touch of vanilla to round it out).

At Patric Food & Beverage Development, we approach sugar reduction holistically. That means not just swapping ingredients, but also adjusting processes (for instance, tweaking baking time or using aeration techniques when appropriate) and considering the consumer experience end-to-end. We conduct sensory evaluations to ensure that the reformulated product meets high expectations – no strange aftertastes, no textural letdowns. Our expertise spans baked goods, confectionery, dairy desserts, beverages, and beyond, so we can cross-pollinate ideas from one area to another. (Who says a trick used in candy can’t inspire a solution in a pastry, or vice versa?) We also stay up-to-date with emerging sweeteners and regulatory changes, making sure your product not only tastes great but also meets labeling requirements and consumer demand for clean labels.

In short, you don’t have to sacrifice taste or texture to create a healthier, reduced-sugar product. With the right formulation strategies – and the right development partner – you can deliver sweets and treats that are better for consumers and still utterly enjoyable. Sugar reduction is a challenge, but as we’ve seen, it’s far from an “impossible dream.” It just takes science, skill, and a bit of sweet ingenuity. Patric Food & Beverage Development is here to guide food innovators through those challenges, helping turn bold sugar-reduction goals into high-quality, market-ready realities. Here’s to crafting products that delight the taste buds with less sugar and zero compromise on eating experience!

 

Sources:

  1. Di Monaco, R. et al. (2018). Strategies to reduce sugars in food. Current Opinion in Food Science, 19, 92–97.daneshyari.comdaneshyari.comdaneshyari.comdaneshyari.com

  2. Su, K. et al. (2021). Reducing sugar and aroma in a confectionery gel without compromising flavour through addition of air inclusions. Food Chemistry, 354, 129579.pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.govpubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

  3. Deliza, R. et al. (2021). Rethinking sugar reduction in processed foods. Current Opinion in Food Science, 40, 58–66.sciencedirect.com

  4. FoodNavigator (2024). Do consumers prefer sugar or non-nutritive sweeteners?foodnavigator.comfoodnavigator.com

9 Most Fascinating Challenges in Custom Gummy Development (And How We Solve Them)

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Creating the perfect gummy isn’t just about sweetness and chewiness—it’s a delicate balance of science and artistry. Whether you’re crafting vegan gummies, functional candies, or a bold new flavor profile, each step in the process brings unique challenges. At Patric Food and Beverage Development, we specialize in overcoming these hurdles to help you create gummies that deliver on taste, texture, and functionality. Here’s a closer look at nine challenges you might face—and how we tackle them with precision.

1. Gelatin vs. Pectin: Choosing the Right Base

The Problem: A client wanted a heat-stable gummy but also wanted to maintain the same bouncy texture they loved in gelatin-based products.

The Science: Gelatin and pectin gel differently and have distinct textural characteristics. Pectin requires precise acid and sugar levels to set properly. To solve this, we prepared multiple gummy batches using different gelling agents—pectin, gelatin, agar, carrageenan, and various blends. Employing our latest-generation Stable Micro Systems texture analyzer for formal texture profile analysis, plus sensory assessments by our team, allowed us to pinpoint the optimal formula that balanced heat stability and the bounciness our client desired.

2. Sugar Crystallization: A Sticky Situation

The Problem: A potential client noticed their gummies developed a grainy texture after a few weeks on the shelf.

The Science: This graininess often arises from exceeding sugar solubility limits, enabling sucrose crystals to form in the finished product over time. Close attention must be paid to the solubility of every ingredient in the gummy, and certain stabilizers or sugar alternatives can help. For example, starch syrups both replace a portion of the sucrose and increase the viscosity and stability of the candy.

3. Uneven Dosage in Functional Gummies

The Problem: A client producing CBD-infused gummies found that dosage levels varied widely, causing compliance issues and customer complaints.

The Science: We emphasized that high-shear mixing is essential for homogeneity, and we advised testing product samples at different points in the confectionery kettle over time to identify and correct mixing shortfalls. Additionally, the format of the CBD matters. Diluting the active in MCT oil or using emulsifiers (or even a pre-made CBD emulsion) can greatly improve the uniform distribution of the CBD in the gummy base.

4. Bitterness from Active Ingredients

The Problem: A cannabis gummy maker struggled with a pronounced bitterness from their active ingredients.

The Science: We deployed a multi-pronged strategy—bitterness blockers, natural sweeteners, and precise acid adjustments—paired with flavor profiles known to mask bitterness (such as grapefruit or other citrus). After multiple trials, we landed on a flavor system that masked unwanted notes while maintaining a clean-label formula.

5. Moisture Issues: Too Sticky or Too Hard

The Problem: A confectionery company noticed their gummies became sticky during summer months.

The Science: Many gummy ingredients are hygroscopic and readily absorb moisture. Compounding matters, standard plastic films are permeable to water vapor, so gummies will slowly absorb ambient humidity if not stored in cool, low-humidity conditions. One of the most effective solutions is multi-layer (e.g., mylar) packaging that includes plastic and a metallic film barrier. Many manufacturers overlook packaging details—this simple fix often solves their stickiness woes.

6. Heat Stability: Surviving the Hot Shipment

The Problem: A nutraceutical gummy company launched a product with almost 50% active ingredient, but the specialized pectin required for gelation wasn’t as heat-stable as a standard type. Gummies melted and deformed during hot-weather shipping.

The Science: Careful selection of the specific pectin grade is crucial. The type of pectin (high-methoxyl, low-methoxyl, amidated, etc.) matters because each reacts differently to sugar (Brix), pH, and divalent cations (such as calcium, magnesium, and zinc). A heat-stability trial before finalizing pectin type is highly recommended for any product shipping in warm climates.

7. Texture Perfection: Finding the Right Bite

The Problem: A startup making functional gummies received consumer complaints about overly tough chew.

The Science: Gummy texture depends on the balance of gelling agents, sugars, and acids. However, certain sugar replacers and high levels of active ingredients can push the formulation beyond typical textural tweaks. In these cases, less common food ingredients can act as “conditioners.” For instance, MCT oil (or other fats) can soften a firm gummy. There are also non-fat ingredients that have powerful softening effects, and strategic blends can deliver an even greater reduction in toughness.

8. pH Sensitivity: The Gelling Balancing Act

The Problem: A gummy made with natural fruit flavors failed to set, creating a sticky mess.

The Science: Beyond having the correct sugar concentration (Brix) and a sufficient level of pectin, pectin also requires a precise pH range for optimal gel formation. We introduced additional acid and buffering agents to maintain this ideal pH while increasing pectin concentration. This ensured a consistent set, even with fruits like banana that are lower in acidity.

9. Color and Flavor Stability: Fading Over Time

The Problem: A client using vegetable-derived colors noticed that their gummies faded in color and lost flavor after several months.

The Science: Natural colors degrade more easily than artificial FD&C colors. We examined antioxidant use, modified the packaging to reduce light and oxygen exposure, and optimized the choice of colorants. These steps significantly extended the shelf life of both color and flavor.

Bringing Gummy Dreams to Life

From small startups to established brands, we help clients turn gummy challenges into gummy successes. Whether it’s masking bitterness, improving shelf stability, or ensuring the perfect texture, our scientific expertise and state-of-the-art lab equipment can tackle the most complex problems.

Have a gummy problem that needs solving?
Get in touch to learn how we can bring your vision to life!

Phenolic Compounds in Food: How They Affect Flavor, Texture, and Preservation

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Phenolic compounds are chemical substances characterized by one or more hydroxyl groups (an oxygen and hydrogen atom bonded together, similar to water) attached to an aromatic ring (a ring-shaped arrangement of carbon atoms with specific bonding patterns). Simply put, they are plant chemicals with specific structural features that contribute to their properties.

Plants produce these compounds as part of their defense mechanisms to protect themselves from environmental stress, pests, and diseases. In foods, these compounds are responsible for various sensory attributes, including bitterness, astringency (a dry, puckering sensation), color, and aroma.

The most well-known subgroups of phenolic compounds include:

  • Flavonoids: Found in fruits, vegetables, tea, and wine, flavonoids are known for their antioxidant activity—they help protect cells from damage caused by free radicals (unstable molecules that can harm cells). They contribute to the bitterness and color of foods.
  • Tannins: Present in red wine, tea, and chocolate, tannins are responsible for the astringent, mouth-drying sensation you experience when consuming these products. They bind to proteins in your saliva, reducing lubrication and creating that drying effect.
  • Phenolic Acids: Found in coffee, fruits, and grains, these compounds contribute to the antioxidant properties of foods and influence flavor.

Phenolic Compounds and Flavor

Phenolic compounds significantly impact the flavor of many foods. They contribute bitterness and astringency, adding complexity and depth that many consumers enjoy.

  • Dark Chocolate: The bitterness is due to high flavonoid content, particularly catechins and epicatechins found in cocoa beans. These compounds not only provide a distinct taste but also enhance antioxidant properties associated with health benefits like reducing inflammation.
  • Red Wine: Tannins cause the astringent sensations that add structure and balance to wine, affecting how it feels in your mouth and how flavors develop as you sip. They also help the wine age gracefully, developing more complex flavors over time.

Phenolic compounds also influence aroma and color. Flavonoids are responsible for the vibrant reds, blues, and purples in berries and grapes, enhancing visual appeal. Other phenolics contribute to the rich aromas in coffee and certain teas.

Phenolic Compounds and Texture

Beyond flavor, phenolic compounds affect the texture of food through astringency. This dry, puckering sensation occurs when tannins bind to proteins in your saliva, reducing lubrication.

Understanding how these compounds influence mouthfeel (the way food feels in your mouth) is essential in food development, especially when aiming for desirable textures using natural ingredients.

Phenolic Compounds and Food Preservation

One of the most important roles of phenolic compounds is their ability to act as natural preservatives due to their antioxidant properties. They help slow down oxidation, a chemical process that leads to spoilage, rancidity, and loss of flavor.

  • Oxidation: Occurs when food is exposed to oxygen, causing fats and oils to degrade, resulting in unpleasant flavors and odors.

Phenolic compounds combat oxidation by neutralizing free radicals, unstable molecules that accelerate spoilage. By stabilizing these molecules, phenolic compounds preserve natural flavors and extend shelf life.

  • Red Wine: Phenolic compounds help the wine age gracefully, developing complexity without spoiling.
  • Chocolate: Flavonoids prevent fats in cocoa butter from oxidizing, keeping chocolate smooth and flavorful longer.
  • Baked Goods: Phenolic acids from whole grains or fruits protect fats in baked goods from oxidation, extending shelf life without artificial preservatives.

Phenolic Compounds in Clean-Label Development

With increasing demand for clean-label products made from simple, recognizable ingredients, manufacturers are turning to natural sources of phenolic compounds to enhance flavor and preservation.

  • Fruits and Berries: Blueberries, strawberries, and grapes are rich in flavonoids and phenolic acids. They enhance flavor and color while providing antioxidant protection.
  • Cocoa and Chocolate: Rich in flavonoids, cocoa offers health benefits and enhances flavor and preservation in chocolate products without synthetic additives.
  • Herbs and Spices: Rosemary, thyme, and oregano contain polyphenols (another term for phenolic compounds), especially rosmarinic acid with strong antioxidant properties. They can be used in savory products to enhance flavor and naturally preserve food.

Balancing Flavor and Preservation in Food Development

Working with phenolic compounds involves balancing their sensory properties with preservation benefits. While they effectively slow oxidation, their bitter or astringent characteristics can dominate if not carefully managed.

  • Dark Chocolate: Bitterness from flavonoids can be moderated by adjusting sugar content or adding nuts and dried fruits.
  • Savory Products: Herbs and spices rich in phenolic compounds can be paired with fats and oils to create a harmonious flavor that enhances the food while providing preservation benefits.

Conclusion

Phenolic compounds are vital in food for their contributions to flavor, texture, and preservation. Their antioxidant properties make them powerful tools for extending shelf life in clean-label products, and their sensory attributes add complexity to food and beverages. As the demand for natural, minimally processed foods grows, phenolic compounds offer essential ingredients for creating products that are both flavorful and durable. By understanding how to balance these compounds’ effects, manufacturers can innovate clean-label products that meet health-conscious consumers’ expectations.

Nutraceutical Food Scientist vs ChatGPT Gummies – Part 1

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You may have already considered turning to ChatGPT to find new functional food recipes. 

If you’ve played around with it and you have any experience with making functional food products such as gummies, you may have noticed some chinks in the armor.

The first and last thing to remember about this program is that it is not sentient. It uses machine learning to sort through everything it can access on the internet–2021 and earlier– and pull an answer that its training says best fits your question.

First I asked ChatGPT 3.5 how to make the best vegan gummy. 

It’s a simple, basic question that anyone searching for a gummy recipe might ask, whether it will stand alone, serve a functional role, or even be a medicinal cannabis edible. 

I wanted a recipe that doesn’t use any animal-derived ingredient (i.e., no gelatin). I was expecting that ChatGPTwould probably suggest something fruit-flavored because that’s so common in the gummy world. 

As far as plant-derived gelling agents go, I know from experience that the three most common are pectin, agar, and starch. For homemade gummies, starch is rarely the choice, as the specialized-for-confectionery modified starches are hard to acquire, and standard starches, like corn starch, doesn’t serve the role as well. 

I also thought that if ChatGPT really understood “best” it would offer something with pectin, given the well-known excellent organoleptic characteristics that result from its use.

But this is what it came up with:

Here’s a recipe for making vegan gummies:

Ingredients:

  • 1/2 cup of fruit juice (preferably low pH like lemon juice or orange juice)
  • 1/4 cup of water
  • 1 tablespoon of agar agar powder (a vegan alternative to gelatin)
  • 1/2 teaspoon of citric acid
  • 1/4 teaspoon of salt
  • Optional: functional ingredient

Equipment:

  • Silicone gummy molds
  • Saucepan
  • Whisk
  • Dropper or syringe

Instructions:

  1. In a saucepan, mix together the fruit juice, water, agar agar powder, citric acid, and salt.
  2. Whisk the mixture together over low heat until the agar agar powder dissolves completely.
  3. Add the optional functional ingredient.
  4. Remove the saucepan from the heat and let it cool for a few minutes.
  5. Using a dropper or syringe, fill the silicone gummy molds with the mixture.
  6. Place the molds in the refrigerator for 30-60 minutes to let the gummies set.
  7. Once the gummies have set, remove them from the molds and store them in an airtight container in the refrigerator.

That’s it! This recipe should yield about 20-30 gummies, depending on the size of your molds. Make sure to label your gummies and keep them out of reach of children or pets

ChatGPT 3.5

Don’t use this ChatGPT gummy recipe!

TLDR: It will turn out sour and may not even gel.

Let me break down what went wrong, and then I’ll ask it a more specific question.

Precision measuring

Generally speaking, it’s better to measure by mass/weight than by volume. Ingredients tend to vary in density from producer to producer. For example ¼ tsp. salt will have a different mass of salt depending on the grain/flake shape and size. Which can change the flavor drastically, especially when you scale up for market (which you can’t realistically do volumetrically with dry ingredients).

It’s not surprising that ChatGPT pulled a gummy recipe with volume-based measurement. It’s just drawing from what’s available on the internet—which leans toward American preferences, and American households still don’t often have scales in their kitchens. But if you’re making gummies commercially, definitely measure your recipe by weight.

Flavor

It makes sense to see fruit as the basis of this recipe. Fruit juices and purees are common gummy ingredients.

But I am surprised to see it suggest a low pH (high acid) juice like lemon, especially since citric acid (which makes lemon sour) is also included. 

People generally prefer their fruit-flavored gummies to be sweet—and there is essentially no sugar in this recipe, especially if you go with lemon juice. But even orange, pineapple, or some other juice would skew toward the sour side…and without adding additional sugar to balance it, I suspect these gummies would taste quite harsh.

Okay but let’s say you’re averse to sugar, or you just like things super sour—there’s still the fact that many functional ingredients are inherently bitter. 

As any chef or food scientist knows, bitterness is enhanced by acid and mitigated by sweetness. So a recipe this sour would potentially be unpalatably bitter, without adding ingredients to manage bitterness.

And if we’re talking about flavor, we can’t just talk about sour, bitter, and sweet.

We also have to consider one of the biggest flavor factors in any recipe: aroma! It can’t just be an afterthought. 

You have to consider all the ingredients that add aroma to the recipe, and in the case of the ChatGPT one above, there isn’t much. Various extracts from fruit or spices are commonly used to add flavor to cooked confectionery such as gummies. Without them, you can end up with a very boring product. Cooking down lemon or orange juice, for example, results in a kind of “canned” washed-out flavor, and it’s not a good look. But imagine the essence of the zest of a lemon or orange rind, or excellent bourbon vanilla extract. Such ingredients can be used to great effect.

Using agar for gummies

Why did ChatGPT choose agar as a baseline for the gummies? It’s impossible to know for sure, but my guess is that more people use agar because it’s easier to work with and doesn’t require a specific pH range and sugar concentration in order to gel. 

Pectin is, for lack of a better word, more difficult.

And if you Google “vegan agar gummy” versus “vegan pectin gummy” you’ll notice there are almost 25% more instances of agar. 

Of course more doesn’t mean better. But ChatGPT has no way of knowing that. It has no mouth, taste buds, or experience-based understanding of flavor or mouthfeel.

Also, agar is known for having lots of variability in its gelling capacity, which is apparently based upon regional differences in chemical composition. This means sometimes even batch to batch variation of agar from the same manufacturer might cause noticeable texture differences. 

Another major consideration is that agar needs to be heated to dissolve in water—but when acid is also involved, the agar begins to break down; which dramatically reduces its gelling capacity. 

In other words step one—which calls for mixing the lemon juice, citric acid, and agar before heating—is not advised.

To do it right you would first cook agar in a sugar solution to a particular temperature or brix, and then cool it down to below 200° F before blending with acidic ingredients. 

Because of agar’s flexibility, ChatGPT’s gummy recipe might work—but it would then be using significantly more agar than necessary, and therefore your cost of goods increases for no reason other than following ChatGPT’s wasteful practices. 

Home gummy makers may not care, but business owners generally want to avoid wasting one of their more expensive gummy ingredients—when a slight change in process could solve the problem instead.

Remember, every inefficiency or extra cost magnifies significantly when you scale for manufacturing. And by then it’s too late…

Fortunately food science is here to rescue you from that sunk-cost fate. 

Shelf life

Remember that absence of sugar and the short cooking time? That adds up to a real short shelf-life, which is related to water activity.

Sugar and salt dampen that activity (so to speak). Without them, even low pH foods can grow mold. Disgusting, yes—but some molds also produce toxins. Which can bring legal trouble on top of the guaranteed ick factor that’ll sink your brand. Can you imagine the Google reviews…?

Unless you want to trust vendors to keep your product refrigerated at all times, you definitely wouldn’t want to use this recipe for commercial purposes.

Always always always run any newly developed products through shelf-life testing. (Ask me how)

How to get a decent gummy recipe from ChatGPT

ChatGPT’s strengths are also its weaknesses. All it does is pull from what already exists online. It’s not actually creating anything truly new. It can’t determine what will work versus what will fall flat and why. It has no sense—it’s just a masterful indexer and data analyzer.

Laying aside its lack of sensory input and actual experience to focus on what does make it a useful tool—one perpetual problem with the program still is that it’s hard to know what you don’t know. Both for the AI itself and for the humans trying to train it to give useful responses.

For example, how could ChatGPT reasonably know that pectin is preferable over agar for its superior flavor release, or that pectin has a more familiar mouthfeel for westerners? We would likely have to force it to consider these issues in our original question, and to do that, we’d have to realize that they are potential problems in the first place, and unless you are a confectionery expert or food scientist, that would be very unlikely information for you to have.

That said, if ChatGPT were trained to take into account issues like flavor release, mouthfeel, flavor profiles, and so forth, it may be able to self-correct. Each new version of ChatGPT leaps closer and closer to truly useful and not just entertaining.

But in the meantime, just remember that better questions can produce better results. (Hey—just like in science!)

So this time I asked ChatGPT:

How to make the best vegan gummy using pectin & granulated sugar, a recipe that will result in gummies that actually set, with a good mouthfeel and flavor. Listing ingredients in metric weights.

And here’s what it came up with:

Ingredients:

  • 250 ml fruit juice of your choice
  • 10 g pectin
  • 200 g granulated sugar
  • 2 g citric acid
  • 2 g vanilla extract
  • Optional: functional ingredient

Instructions:

  1. In a small saucepan, combine the fruit juice and pectin. Whisk until the pectin is fully dissolved.
  2. Add the sugar to the juice mixture and stir until it’s fully dissolved.
  3. Heat the mixture over low heat and add the citric acid and vanilla extract. Stir well.
  4. Continue heating the mixture over low heat, stirring occasionally, until it reaches 107°C. Use a candy thermometer to measure the temperature.
  5. Remove the mixture from the heat and let it cool for a few minutes.
  6. Add the optional functional ingredient and stir well.
  7. Pour the mixture into a silicone gummy mold, filling each mold about 3/4 full.
  8. Refrigerate the molds for at least an hour or until the gummies are firm.
  9. Remove the gummies from the mold and store them in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to two weeks.

Be sure to label your gummies clearly and keep them out of reach of children and pets.

ChatGPT 3.5

This recipe looks somewhat better—but even at a glance I can tally up several issues that would prevent this from ever exceeding mediocre.

It did get rid of the extra water, which bodes well for shelf life. It also added a thermometer to the process, which is imperative when using pectin (though its heat/time ratio is a problem). And the flavor balance seems much more palatable, with vanilla added for more pronounced flavor.

But again, this recipe is still rife with problems. It would never work as a product for any reputable functional food business. And depending upon the pH of the fruit you choose, it might not even gel, though with the significant amount of pectin called for, it might also gel very firmly.

Read how I solve these problems (and more) in the next chapter of Food Scientist vs ChatGPT – in which I work with a client to develop this gummy recipe into a delicious, high-quality, long-lasting, and viable product for the nutraceutical gummy market.

Follow our LinkedIn for updates & the next installment!

How to Make Better Functional Chocolate with Food Science

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Have you noticed that nearly all the functional chocolates available these days range from waxy and cloying, to mediocre and just barely tolerable?

Trust me, I’m a scientist—I’ve carried out careful sensory evaluation on a significant sample size of the functional chocolates. The results have been…disappointing. But I’m still hopeful. Why?

Because it means there’s a huge opportunity for a functional foods company (like yours) to corner the market niche of high-quality functional chocolate.

Until that happens though, we’re all consigned to gulping down “chocolates” that taste like muddy, bittersweet medicine. Gross.

At least each dose is small enough to take down in a bite or two…

But what if I told you that functional chocolate can be as fantastically flavored and gourmet as anything you’d find in a San Francisco Whole Foods or from a multi-generation French chocolate maker?

It just takes a little focused food science and finesse.

How to use functional ingredients in chocolates

I’m glad you asked. Whether you are trying to incorporate CBD, melatonin, or a newly available functional ingredient into your chocolate—high quality functional ingredients should be your starting point for making functional chocolate, not an afterthought.

Most functional chocolate producers add their functional ingredients almost as an afterthought. It’s just there to pack a punch and deliver a dose. So they can boast some fantastic milligram total on the packaging, and shove mediocre products down our greedy throats.

But don’t our greedy tongues deserve to be in on the experience too? Shouldn’t the chocolates we eat TASTE as good as they are a benefit to our health?

If you agree, here’s the start of an answer:

Think of your functional ingredient as a flavor ingredient. Not just a magic or medicinal one.

If it has clear aroma, bitter, or astringent notes, for example, these should be considered as components of the product from the ground up, not at the final moment.

What’s the best functional ingredient for chocolate?

First and foremost, invest in high-quality ingredients that have minimal off-flavors, if possible. In poorly purified ingredients there can be an array of unpleasant flavors. This is particularly common in the growing edibles industry.

But this is usually avoidable, because there are often a number of functional ingredient producers/vendors representing a range of qualities from cheap and dirty tasting, to clean and virtually without aroma, even if bitterness still needs to be dealt with. 

Because don’t your customers deserve better?

So why would you use anything other than high-quality ingredients in functional chocolates?

How to make high-quality functional chocolate?

Be thoughtful about every ingredient!

Making top quality chocolate always revolves around at least three main taste elements: sweet, bitter, and sour. Not to mention aroma and other sensory characteristics like astringency.

Cocoa is naturally bitter, and so are many functional ingredients. To compensate for the bitterness of functional ingredients, many brands will simply drop the cocoa percentage and drive up the sugar. But all of that sweetness also drives out the complexity.

There are many ways to mask, balance, and/or incorporate bitterness in functional foods, such as CBD-containing edibles, but remember—every adjustment you make in a chocolate recipe has a ripple effect.

Choosing ingredients that enhance existing flavors while naturally balancing those that tend to be more unpleasant, can go a long way toward creating top-quality functional chocolate to enchant the market. There are many ingredients we can use with this seemingly magical ability. If you’re wondering, one such great example is sea salt. It packs a huge punch when it comes to enhancing flavor of virtually any product.

Also, remember…

You don’t need to go bean-to-bar for gourmet functional chocolate

As a functional chocolate producer, you’re better off as a chocolatier rather than a chocolate maker. Going all the way back to the bean adds little to your goals and process except extra steps and stress.

Chocolate maker is someone who makes chocolate from scratch, using different percentages of cacao (cocoa beans that need to be sourced, roasted, and further processed) and other ingredients.

Chocolatier sources finished chocolate from a chocolate maker, and adds ingredients and flavors to create their own bar or confection.

You should certainly source one or more high-quality chocolates that will pair well with the flavor and aroma profile of whichever functional ingredient(s) you choose. And another thing…

Don’t try to cram maximum functional ingredients into every bite

Not only does that let your customer enjoy a few more bites of your delicious chocolate per dose, but decreasing the density of functional ingredient also automatically decreases the bitterness you have to deal with.

This can work on a marketing level too. Who sells more bars? The brand with 10 doses per bar, or the one that is super delicious and mouthwatering, costs less, and sacrifices only a few doses?

Summary: How does food science lead to better functional chocolate?

When it comes to formulating the best functional chocolate for the market, there are a lot of elements to consider.

  • Functional ingredients vendors
  • Format of the functional ingredients (oils, powders, etc.)
  • Dosage
  • Cocoa percentage
  • Mouthfeel
  • Appearance
  • Sweet, sour, bitter balance
  • Overall flavor bouquet

As a food scientist with a PhD in flavor chemistry, when it comes to functional chocolate formulation, one of my most important and unique tools is formal experimental-design. I have the software, lab experience, and deep knowledge of taste and flavor on a molecular level that you can’t get anywhere else.

And by the way, before becoming a functional food science consultant, I was for many years an award-winning chocolate maker and confectioner, with additional experience in formulation of bakery items, ice cream, beverages, and more.

Any worthwhile chocolate consultant could hopefully help you source a decent chocolate; but only food science can help you pinpoint the best possible version, based on multi-variable experiment setup, multi-objective optimization, and formal sensory analysis (including consumer testing, if you have the budget and time).  

So what it comes down to fundamentally is this: What are you trying to achieve?

Are you trying to make excellent-quality functional chocolate that loyal customers will buy over and over again because it’s so delicious?

Or are you just trying to get a bunch of one-time sales?

If you answered Yes to the first question, reach out and let’s formulate some gourmet functional chocolate at a quality level that still rarely exists in the functional foods market.

MORE: Want to see more about how functional chocolate formulation works? Follow us on LinkedIn!

Product Formulation Optimization #3

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The Troublesome Yet Terrific Tortilla (Part 3)

In part 3 of our look at the troublesome yet terrific tortilla, following as it does from a general description of the tortilla quandary in part 1, and some specific details regarding the tortilla challenges anticipated in part 2, finally I’ll begin to explain how I approached the task of optimizing the formulation, or in simple terms, how I made the very best tortilla.

What Is “Best?”

As mentioned previously, I’ve already defined that I am speaking of wheat-flour-based tortillas; so my goal in optimizing a tortilla formulation is to produce the wheat-flour-based tortilla with the best organoleptic characteristics. It’s worth taking a moment to consider what I mean by “best.” In this case, I am considering only my own preferences, whether I’m talking about aroma, overall flavor, mouthfeel, or even appearance. However, if I were developing this tortilla for a regional restaurant chain, it would make sense to do consumer evaluation that includes a sample of the regular customers of that chain, and perhaps also consumers that the chain is trying to convert to customers. My specific preferences, for example, may or may not overlap well with those of the restaurant customers. But luckily, since the tortillas in question are for me, I can more simply consider my own preferences.

All Wheat-Flour Tortillas Are Not Created Equal.

Also, it is important for me to clarify that I want a tortilla that tastes great when fresh. I’m not at all concerned about storing the finished product on the shelf, or in the fridge or freezer. I want a tortilla that I can griddle now, eat, enjoy thoroughly, and then move on. If I were developing a tortilla for a grocery chain, I would have to reconsider this approach, because in that case the end consumer has little chance of buying the tortillas fresh and hot. They will need to be reheated out of necessity, and they will likely need to be able to remain free of mold for at least a week on the shelves, and perhaps longer. Such a tortilla would have characteristics that are dramatically different from the type I want to eat for my own enjoyment.

Are there Additional Constraints?

There are plenty of other details to consider. Do I want to work with ingredients available at the local grocery? Am I interested milling grain into flour? Does the tortilla need to be vegetarian? What types of equipment are available for processing and cooking the tortillas? And speaking of production constraints, while I’m willing to deal with dough that is a bit sticky or stiff and difficult to roll out in order to achieve a better tortilla, there is a limit to my patience. I don’t want to make my life 50% more difficult just to squeak in an extra 1% increase in improved mouthfeel. So, as I’m rating the various sensory characteristics of each tortilla, I can also consider rating things like dough stickiness, dough toughness, and perhaps overall workability.

Pulling Everything Together.

I’ve said that I want to optimize the formulation for a wheat-flour-based tortilla that is best according to my own preferences. I want to be able to make it at home with a 4’x4′ maple butcher block serving as the work surface, a wooden rolling pin, a 6-qt stand mixer, an induction range, a cast-iron skillet, and a spatula. I would also generally like to use ingredients that are readily available (e.g., King Arthur AP wheat flour, sea salt, and filtered tap water), but I’m willing to put in a little extra work to improve the quality of the added fat.

Ingredients.

For the fat in the tortillas, I’ll render my own lard from the backfat of locally raised hogs. As part of the rendering process, I’ll use a temperature high enough to brown the cracklings once they are void of fat, which adds additional roasted complexity to the lard’s flavor profile. At the end of the rendering process, I’ll also add some smoked bacon to give the lard a subtle smoky note. I will not be using plant-based oils in this recipe, as I know from experience that they have bland or off flavors in tortillas. I will also not be using baking powder. As mentioned in part 2, baking powder is quite a common ingredient in modern tortillas, but I would prefer to depend upon steam–from the added water–to leaven and lighten the texture of the tortillas. In my experience, the mouthfeel of the end product is better than when baking powder is used. So now I’ve clearly defined the constraints for this project. What’s next?

Freshly griddled wheat-flour tortillas made with freshly rendered pork lard, filtered water, and sea salt

A Product Optimization Experiment.

We now have to take our known constraints and design an experiment that will allow us to optimize the tortilla formulation. How should we proceed? One variable at a time? Often seen as the acronym OVAT, this is thought by most non-scientists to describe how experiments are run according to the scientific method. Actually, even some scientists believe this. But here’s the thing, it’s dead wrong. Even in a relatively simple food like our tortillas with only four ingredients (i.e., flour, water, lard, salt), changing the amount of one variable at a time, let’s say the flour, while holding all else constant, is likely to be, at best, an incredibly inefficient way to determine what the optimal tortilla recipe is, and at worst, will never find it at all. In short, OVAT has significant disadvantages. Arguably, the most important disadvantage is that important “interactions” usually exist in foods, and will be missed with the OVAT approach.

Interactions!

In this project, if we simplify for a moment to say that our only goal is to improve the flavor of the tortilla on a scale from 1-10, then any positive main effect would be one related to any of the individual ingredients that increases quality. For example, maybe more lard increases quality on average. That’s lard’s main effect. But what happens when water and lard are both present? Does water, in addition to having its own main effect on quality also impact the degree to which lard has a positive impact? If so, then that would be an interaction effect. It might be the case that with smaller amounts of water, lard is hugely positive in its impact, but with more water it makes a much smaller positive difference. It is immediately clear why interactions can cause huge problems with the OVAT approach; because if you only change one variable/ingredient at a time, you can’t determine if interactions exist. And guess what? Interactions almost always exist to some degree, and sometimes they are hugely influential. So what can we do about this?

Optimal Design of Experiments.

When the OVAT approach can’t be trusted to work, which is usually, instead we can rely on the considerable theory in the field of statistics that supports what is called “design of experiments,” along with modern computers and software, to produce an optimal experimental design. Such a design is able to help determine what the optimal formulation would be of a tortilla, again from the flavor quality standpoint defined above, but more than that, such a design even allows the experienced product development expert to determine the optimal formulation while considering several characteristics at the same time. This is sometimes called multiple objective optimization. How it does this is easier to show with an example than to explain in prose, so we’ll take a look at a tortilla-development optimal design in the final part of this series (part 4).

–Alan McClure

Product Formulation Optimization #2

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The Troublesome Yet Terrific Tortilla (Part 2)

Continuing on with the product formulation optimization theme, using tortilla formulation specifically as an example, we dig in further. As a reminder, tortilla formulation is more complicated than it may at first appear. As I wrote previously:

“From the standpoint of the uninitiated, a tortilla seems a simple beast. As a plain product on its own there are no fillings or inclusions, no added flavors, swirls of color, or fancy shapes. Even the plastic bags in which they’re sold ten at a time are nothing special. But the phrase “deceptively simple” does exist for a reason. And one could reasonably argue that it was coined as a product formulation expert was doing some deep thinking about the common, yet commonly unimpressive, tortilla.”

In this recent post I also spoke about the two different types of tortillas (corn and wheat flour), and noted some of the complexities of both of them including nixtamalization in the case of corn tortillas, and the presence of gluten and necessary added fat in the case of the wheat flour tortillas. Clearly, when done well, both types of tortillas are fantastic, but my family was handed down a wheat flour tortilla tradition from my Mexican great grandmother Guadalupe Otila Macias, and since I was a wee child I’ve been truly mesmerized by this type.

Watching my grandmother mix and knead them by hand, roll them out with a flick or two of the wrist, and then bake them on top of a cast-iron griddle on the stove–the incredible smell–and then passing one steaming and blistered with flavor from hand to hand with nearly burnt fingertips, taking bites and smiling uncontrollably. These are some of the most powerful memories of my childhood. Why would I ever want to change a single detail in my original family recipe?

As I mentioned previously, wheat flour tortillas can be tricky because the gluten proteins in wheat (i.e., glutenin and gliadin) when hydrated, help to create a stretchy and springy dough that is notoriously hard to roll out. To produce a less tough and easier to roll tortilla, people traditionally added some amount of fat to the dough in the form of freshly rendered pork lard. The added lard reduces the overall gluten development, and the tortillas become more aromatic and the mouthfeel more tender and less chewy. And when everything is just right, the tortillas puff magically like perfect little pillows, making them even lighter in texture. But what about when everything isn’t just right?

tortillas freshly cooked
Freshly griddled wheat-flour tortillas made with freshly rendered pork lard, filtered water, and sea salt

The Baking Powder Bandage

The problem is that getting the ratio of ingredients just right can be very tricky. If it is even a bit off, or the griddle temperature is not optimal, or the tortilla maker is just not paying the right amount of attention, the tortillas can end up dense and unpleasant. The solution to this problem used by most is an addition of baking powder. It allows the tortilla maker a bit more flexibility in all of the important conditions. However, the texture of a baking-powder-risen tortilla is not quite the same as one without, and it has been written more than once by tortilla aficionados that the baking powder version is simply not as good.

The Vegetable Oil Blunder

Another problem is that as refined plant-based vegetable oils have become much cheaper, and good fatback from which to make lard has become less readily available in the marketplace, recipes have begun to call for either liquid oil or hydrogenated oil, also called shortening. These oil-based tortillas simply aren’t capable of tasting as good as those made from the roasted and rendered fat of flavorful hogs.

So, the modern homemade wheat-flour tortilla, which itself is scarce compared to the store-bought versions with little personality, is itself a shadow of its former glorious self. But if these changes to the modern tortilla have led to a poverty of quality, what is to be done about it? How can we possibly attempt to recreate a product formulation that most of us have never tasted?

I’ll explain how I approached this challenge in an effort to do just that. Stay tuned for más detalles in Part 3.

–Alan McClure

Product Formulation Optimization #1

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The Troublesome Yet Terrific Tortilla (Part 1)

From the standpoint of the uninitiated, a tortilla seems a simple beast. As a plain product on its own there are no fillings or inclusions, no added flavors, swirls of color, or fancy shapes. Even the plastic bags in which they’re sold ten at a time are nothing special. But the phrase “deceptively simple” does exist for a reason. And one could reasonably argue that it was coined as a product formulation expert was doing some deep thinking about the common, yet commonly unimpressive, tortilla.

So where should we start to understand the product formulation challenge better? It’s often the case that the very best examples of foods are traditional ones. And certainly where tortillas are concerned, traditional versions are far better than the most familiar brands at the local grocer. For those who have had incredible tortillas, the kind that are calling out to be eaten, simply, steaming hot from the Mexican comal, fingers burning, we know this in our gut. But if one wants this beautiful experience far away from a Mexican market or abuela, is it even possible?

What is a tortilla anyway?

First, let’s simplify the issue. Tortillas come in two main types: corn- and wheat-flour-based. Corn tortillas are traditionally made from alkali-treated heirloom corn, called “nixtamal,” a Nahuatl term borrowed from the Aztec. This process, often referred to as nixtamalization, uses a relatively dilute solution of culinary lime, aka calcium hydroxide, in water to catalyze hydrolysis and conversion of various compounds in the corn kernels’ hull. This process makes the corn easier to digest, more nutritious, less likely to contain harmful mycotoxins, and most people would claim, myself included, more delicious. In fact, the flavor is so good, that traditional corn tortillas require nothing more than ground nixtamal, water, and bit of salt, to create a fabulous flat food fit for an Aztec king. But, as previously mentioned…

Corn is not the only way…

In northern Mexico and Texas, which also used to be part of Mexico, where wheat flour was more readily available, tortillas made from this grain were more common. And because the proteins in wheat, when hydrated, help to create a stretchy and springy dough that is notoriously hard to roll out, people added some amount of fat to the dough in the form of freshly rendered pork lard. The lard reduced the overall gluten development, making the thin disks of dough easier to roll out, and moreover, made the tortillas more aromatic and the mouthfeel more tender than chewy. And when the proportions of flour:water:lard are just right, the tortillas puff magically, making them lighter and more tender in texture, and giving the surface of the tortilla a deliciously mottled appearance, due to light charring of the steam-puffed pockets on the surface, thereby creating even more flavor–Maillard reaction pathways y’all.

tortillas freshly cooked
Freshly griddled wheat-flour tortillas made with freshly rendered pork lard, filtered water, and sea salt

Now, I’m a sucker for both types of tortilla, and I’ve made countless batches of both, nixtamalizing my own corn, experimenting with many of the countless heirloom Mexican varieties, and for the wheat tortillas, rendering my own lard, getting the roasted, almost smoky pork flavor just right. But I have to admit that having grown up with wheat flour tortillas in my family, a cultural contribution of my Mexican maternal great-grandmother, Guadalupe Otila Macias, who emigrated to Texas as a young girl, I have spent considerably more time thinking about, making, and certainly eating wonderful wheat flour tortillas. And I can assure you that even with four ingredients, they are tricky to perfect, or more technically, to optimize the product formulation.

But I’ll tell you what; recently I did just that. Stay tuned for más detalles in Part 2.

–Alan McClure

Good, Better, Best?

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Sage advice from the product developer:

How good is good enough? Is it just fine to be as good as the competition, or does a product always need to be even better to compete? And what if better isn’t even good enough? Developing award-winning products that utterly destroy the competition means aiming for the best possible version of a product. With all of the choice in the marketplace these days, it’s the only reasonable approach to ensure sales superiority and passion for the product on the part of consumers, tastemakers, and influencers. But how does one achieve the very best?

The little-known hard truth is that creativity, inspiration, passion and dedication simply aren’t enough. Every single product has an infinite number of possible iterations. Tweaking one ingredient at a time based on experience may give you a better product than the one before, but is it actually the very best? Without following well constructed optimally designed product development experiments, the answer is almost certainly “No.” Luckily for us, such experiments make the product development process more precise and more efficient, saving time and money while producing not just a better product, but the very best!

-Alan McClure