Healthy living
at home and cooking their own food and engaging with nutrition. The pandemic has brought many things to light and made us aware of the importance of healthy eating habits.” Dr. Schär, for its part, continued to invest during the pandemic – a prime example being its acquisition of the Glasgow based allergen-free, fresh bread manufacturer, GDR Food Technology Ltd (GDR), which represents Dr. Schär’s first UK production plant.
Meet the gluten challenge On the face of it, the acquisition of GDR Food Technology was a logical one, given the importance of bread as part of an individual’s everyday diet. The challenge, though, has been that while the gluten protein can be found in wheat, barley, rye and triticale, among other cereals, its primary function is to provide elasticity to the dough, which is then used to create a line of products by giving a chewy texture and maintaining the product’s shape. That is easier said than done. To achieve optimum taste and texture requires the testing of different types of flours, modifying existing mixing and processing methods and finally, ensuring shelf life isn’t compromised. Moreover, gluten has a naturally high level of water hydration, for example, meaning that any corresponding difference in texture will likely impact the temperatures at which rolls and bread are sliced. Also needing to be factored into this equation is longevity and freshness of the product – an obvious solution being the need to find a water-soluble extract from a grain that also happens to be gluten-free.
Grimshaw maintains an air of confidence though, arguing that combining the company’s expertise in food technology and nutrition, coupled with its understanding of the needs and wishes of its consumers, allows for it to “consistently develop food products for a nutritionally balanced diet and continually strive to improve its processes and management systems”.
Preventing contamination It’s also a question of maintaining quality checks, given the issue of contamination is crucial when it comes to making a product gluten-free. That’s why GF products must be packaged in a way that protects them more than conventional products, according to Grimshaw. He adds: “Our quality assurance teams support our production teams in standardising processes. They monitor and control hazards to safeguard the quality of the raw materials, as well as of the end products. (And) that means no artificial flavourings, aromas or colourings, are added. Nor artificial preservatives.” “Together with our suppliers and processors, they ensure that we deliver only the best and safest
Ingredients Insight /
www.ingredients-insight.com
product to the consumer. Using the VITAL concept (Voluntary, Incidental, Trace Allergen Labelling) an international team of over 40 trained Dr. Schär employees guarantee production quality and safety, from the raw materials to the finished product,” Grimshaw further notes.
Develop the right technologies For Dr Schär, ensuring food safety means not only developing the right production technologies in cooperation with suppliers, but also employing highly specialised technologies for the entire process and investing in them every year to keep them up to date. The dairy industry, meanwhile, faces similar manufacturing challenges – most obviously the need for food companies to ensure their products not only don’t inadvertently contain allergenic ingredients, but also are correctly labelled – usually by documenting their policies on allergen management, as well as developing and complying with an AMP within their food safety programmes.
AMP (Advanced Microbial Profiling) is a DNA technique used to determine the unique mix of the micro-organisms (microbiome) in food samples, without the need to culture them in a lab.
“The pandemic has brought many things to light and made us aware of the importance of healthy eating habits.”
Bradley Grimshaw
As the Global Food Safety Resource Centre has described it: “When compared to traditional culturing, AMP offers a different way to investigate the microflora in a food product. By showing ‘everything that is there’ – not just those microbes that can be cultured – it can provide us with insights that were previously unavailable from data that was formerly unobtainable.” For example, the unintentional presence of allergens in a product may sometimes occur – usually the result of issues such as management failures, including mismanagement of raw ingredients, accidental misformulation of a product, or incorrect/ incomplete labelling. Similarly, there may be cross- contact – including during the manufacturing process – due to equipment design, poor cleaning, the result of airborne particles during rework, or simply through operator error.
Irrespective of what potentially could go wrong in the factory, governments have slowly been catching-up – from a legislative standpoint – when it comes to the promotion of free-from products, as well as protecting consumers from allergens where potentially serious issues may arise.
$4.3bn
The estimated value of the global gluten free product market in 2021 – it is projected to reach $6.2bn by 2030.
Spherical Insights 41
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84
