Fruit-based sweetener an alternative to refined sugar

Gat Foods launched Fruitlift, a real-fruit-based ingredient that can replace refined sugars and doesn’t require anti-caking agents.

The formulation consists of natural fruity goodness, including fibres, and offers a wide range of fruits. The base can give a fruity flavour or can be easily blended into a grain-based bakery mix’s signature flavour.

Food companies are aware that they can no longer “sugar coat” the fact that many cereals are heavily laden with refined sugars. This is especially pronounced in children’s breakfasts — the key target market for this sector. While the industry is harnessing efforts to bridge the “sugar gap” and make cereals more nutritive, simple sugar reduction is a tall order that incurs costs and carries technological challenges.

Fruitlift is composed of 90 per cent fruit components in a liquid base that can be injected into any flour mixture in the extrusion line, or applied via the coating drum in the production of cereals. The fruit base delivers a mild sweetness, with or without a fruity flavour.

Gat Foods’ patent-pending technology overcomes the challenge of integrating a wet solution into a dry product, ensuring flavour and sweetness without losing any of a cereal’s crispy texture. Gat Foods applies a built-to-fit approach, allowing the fruit base to be customized to fit any type of manufacturing or extrusion procedure. The right solution can also be formulated to fit any type of flour mixture.

Fruitlift offers food companies a wide choice of fruits to choose from, including apple, banana, mango, citrus fruits, and pineapple. In addition, sweetness levels can be adjusted to anywhere from just a hint of sweetness up to a more full robust flavour, in line with the desires of the client.

(Gat Foods recommends adding the fruit base at 15 per cent volume to endow a pleasantly mild sweetness.) The base already has undergone a successful round of initial trials in a UK extrusion pilot lab.