Day: June 30, 2021

You should be focused on growing your business.   You wouldn’t scour the nation to find ingredients for your home recipes, and you shouldn’t for your manufacturing operations either.  The paperwork, deliveries, minimum order quantities, and payments associated with sourcing many ingredients from many suppliers can be a waste of time for you and your operation.  Working with us will save you time and money.

We recently released a short, animated video entitled, “Why Skidmore,” that explains how we can help simplify the supply chain for food processors and manufacturers.

With the best technical sales and logistics team in the business, combined with strong, long-standing relationships with the industry’s best ingredient manufacturers, Skidmore Sales has the power to provide the right ingredients faster and more efficiently than you can source them on your own.  Our proven process ensures that we remove the supply chain burdens that slow you down – every time.  This will get you back to doing what you do best:  Growing Your Business!

Watch the “Why Skidmore,” video to learn more, and see our comprehensive product catalog.

Contact your Skidmore Sales representative to learn more.

 

 

For many years, industry experts have had their eye on the growing consumer demand for clean-label, plant-based products.  Innova Market Insights for several years has identified each as a top trend in the marketplace.   As far back as 2017, Innova reported that 7 out of 10 US consumers sought healthier snacking options.  Natural, healthy, “free-from” labels continue to be key benefits and are top priorities when consumers choose snacks.  Plant-based ingredients can deliver on all three.

Enter nuts and seeds.  Not only are they a great-tasting, stand-alone snack, but they can also bring nutritional benefits to snack foods, desserts, and more.   According to a recent interview with Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery, the clean-label demand and “interest in plant-based products are drawing focus on nuts and seeds in snacks, bringing them more than a nutritional edge. Their focus as protein-packed has always been known, but now the brands are using seeds, nuts, and other inclusions to bring a textural and flavorful element into their snack products,” says explained a representative for Sensient Flavors, Hoffman Estates, IL.

Nuts and seeds offer the perfect trifecta of taste, texture, and nutrition. All provide protein, fiber, and vitamins, and minerals.  Research has shown that nuts and seeds can be beneficial for heart health, weight management, blood sugar, and healthy aging.

In fact, in 2003, the FDA approved a Qualified Health Claim regarding most nuts and heart disease: “Scientific evidence suggests but does not prove that eating 1.5 ounces per day of most nuts [such as almonds] as part of a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol may reduce the risk of heart disease. [See nutrition information for fat content.]” The types of nuts eligible for this claim are restricted to almonds, hazelnuts, peanuts, pecans, some pine nuts, pistachio nuts, and walnuts. In 2017, macadamia nuts were approved for a similar Qualified Health Claim: “Supportive but not conclusive research shows that eating 1.5 ounces per day of macadamia nuts, as part of a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol and not resulting in increased intake of saturated fat or calories may reduce the risk of coronary heart disease. See nutrition information for fat [and calorie] content.”

Snack and bakery manufacturers are targeting this growing market segment by using versatile and nutritious ingredients like almonds, which are plant-based, free from gluten or dairy, and available in a range of forms including almond flour, almond butter, or sliced and whole natural almonds.

An article by Foodprocessing.com cited “The most common applications of almonds are snacks, cereal, and baked goods. However, other applications are on the rise: A recent Innova Market study showed steady growth in categories such as desserts and ice cream (+10 percent in 2018 over 2017), dairy (+13 percent), spreads (+29 percent), and sports nutrition (+95 percent).  According to Innova, in 2020, almonds were the number one ingredient in global new products and were the number one ideal ingredient in global consumers’ chocolate products.

H&W Ingredients, a subsidiary of Skidmore Sales, represents the nation’s top seed and nut suppliers and offers a wide variety of nuts and seeds for every application.  Contact your Skidmore Sales rep to learn more about we can help you source all the ideal ingredients for your next product innovation.

 

Innophos recently unveiled a new multi-faceted ingredient solution that helps food processors reduce processing time while improving the taste, texture, and appearance of bacon and other meat products. Innophos Optibalance™ 200, a specialty blend ingredient, was created to achieve peak flavor and appearance of bacon while also producing greater yield.

According to the Innophos website, “Optibalance™ 200 is a great way for processors to reduce ingredient costs while speeding up processing time and improving the throughput of pork-brined bacon and other meat products,” said Songwei Wu, Staff Scientist, Innophos, Inc. “As an alternative to STPP (sodium tripolyphosphate), Optibalance™ 200 allows processors to use fewer ingredients with improved results. We can increase the dissolving rate of the pork brine, which also means less equipment downtime to clean clogged injection equipment and improved safety.

Optibalance™ 200 offers good binding, color development, and texture improvement. It also delivers additional manufacturing advantages, including:

• FASTER PROCESSING TIME – more rapid dissolving rate and greater flexibility in the process, with no specific sequence of ingredients required
• HIGHER CAPACITY – reduces the formation of particulates in marinades, reducing clogs and downtime to clean injection equipment
• BETTER FUNCTIONALITY – improves dissolving performance
• LESS INGREDIENT USAGE – use up to 8% less Optibalance compared to STPP (sodium tripolyphosphate) for the same solution

Contact your Skidmore Representative to learn more about the many Innophos ingredients we handle.

According to a recent study, global energy drink sales reached $57.4 billion in 2020. The industry is expected to grow by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7% between 2020 and 2025. This growth is attributed to rising incomes and an increase in sports activities and urbanization. A greater network of channels through which these drinks are sold, including supermarkets, convenience stores, and e-commerce sites, is expected to help fuel sales growth in this industry.

DuPont Tate & Lyle recently offered a formulation sheet that illustrates how Zemea®  Propanediol (PDO) demonstrates advantages over propylene glycol (PG) for taste applications. The sheet explains, “Energy shots and drinks are well known to contain high levels of caffeine, acidulants, sweeteners, branched-chain amino acids (BCAA) and vitamin B’s designed to provide a boost of energy when you need a little help powering through the day; however, the off-taste profile for these beverages is typically poor at best. Sweeteners (i.e. Sucralose) are used in these systems to help mask the off-tastes, but typically do an inadequate job.”

These energy shot formulations demonstrated the advantages of formulating with PDO vs. PG by showing a “novel taste modulation finding of PDO in concentrated aqueous matrix systems.”

To take a closer look at how Zemea Propanediol (PDO) performed, download the formulation sheet.   Contact your Skidmore Sales representative to learn more about Zemea.