Vegetable fibres: Multifunctional clean label ingredients

Besides health benefits, vegetable fibres provide great functionality to many food applications such as bakery, ready meals, soups and vegetarian food products, etc. where they can improve texture, be used as a bulking agent in sugar-reduction and to manage moisture in fat-reduction and much more.

Vegetable fibres such as citrus fibres and carrot fibres are functional and natural ingredients that bring effective value to the final product thanks to their capability to bind up water. In fact, they can bind up to 26 times their own weight.

In meat products such as burger meat and sausages proper moisture binding is important to ensure that the juices stay in the product both while it is sitting in the package and also during cooking. It is possible to improve the juiciness and avoid water loss in the final product with e.g. carrot and pea fibres. Furthermore, adding fibres with high water-binding capacity in a recipe, allows lowering the manufacturing cost.

Also for vegetarian or plant based meat products formulated with e.g. beans, peas and lentils, the excellent water binding capabilities of e.g. citrus fibres can ensure that the final product does not crumble and that  juiciness is maintained also after cooking, ensuring a good taste sensation.

Functional benefits of vegetable fibres

• Improve juiciness

• Manage water and fat losses

• Gain of texture

• Stabilise oil-in-water emulsions

• Increase viscosity thereby providing good mouth-feel when replacing/reducing fat

Other good reasons to use fibres

• Natural ingredient – clean labelling
• Can improve yield / improve formulation costs
• Possible source of fibre claim**
• Easy to use
   

Contact us for more information about our range of label-friendly rice starches for dressings and sauces.

*The water retention of a fibre is “proportional” to its particle size.

**Depending on amount of fibre in the final product.