BTG and Cohen Marketing Services announce new way to add a “healthy kick” to snack foods and baked goods
BTG and Cohen Marketing Services announce new way to add a “healthy kick” to snack foods and baked goods
Technology doubles amount of soy protein in baked and snack foods
BTG (LSE: BGC), the global technology commercialisation company, and Cohen Marketing Services today announced an agreement allowing BTG to commercialise a technology that enables higher soy content in several food product categories,including baked goods, snack foods (examples of these are chips and cookies),and any other dough-based speciality foods.
Consumers and the food industry continue to increase their focus on products providing health benefits, as shown through recent announcements by Kraft Foods and McDonald’s. As this trend continues, many other major food companies worldwide are expected to follow suit.
Soy, in particular, had drawn widespread interest as an ingredient due to its established cardiovascular health benefit and its potential benefit for other diseases such as osteoporosis, prostate cancer and colon cancer (currently under investigation). The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recognised the health benefits of soy by authorising use of a health claim relating to cardiovascular disease for products containing a specified amount of soy. Because foods made with soy protein may lower cholesterol and generally have lower amounts of saturated fat, consumers have embraced soy products and are demanding a broader array of foods containing this ingredient.
Currently, very few dough and baked products contain soy because dough made with a high amount of soy could not be formulated properly to meet the demands of food manufacturers. Through efforts led by Ms Deborah Cohen of Cohen Marketing Services (CMS), a soy dough formulation has now been developed that will enable food manufactures to more than double the amount of soy in baked foods while providing the consistency and texture consumers have come to expect in these food products.
“Our first goal was to make a healthier tortilla chip”, said Ms. Cohen. “We further developed this idea into a formulation that is scalable and allows manufacturers to produce a wide array of soy-based foods that consumers are already familiar with. We project that the technology will greatly improve food manufacturers” ability to develop ingredients for innovative new products and take advantage of the increasing demand for soy in the market”.
“BTG was looking to build upon its success in bringing healthcare technologies to the marketplace as we have done with MRI, cholesterol assay tests, Campath, and BeneFIX”, stated Anthony V. Lando, BTG’s chief operating officer. “With the emergence of our soy dough technology, we are now impacting the food and beverage markets with innovative functional food and nutraceutical offerings. Application of CMS” technology should play a key role in the development of healthier baked foods”.
