Its patented process enables manufacturers to include powdered fruits and veggies in snacks, pasta, pasta sauce, crackers and other products that are subjected to high temperatures and rigorous production processes and retain their nutritional value to the end of their shelf-life - meaning they don’t have to add synthetic vitamins to ensure label claims such as ‘good source of vitamin C’ can be validated.
CEO William Grand told FoodNavigator-USA: “Some companies using powdered fruits and vegetables in their products will make claims like ‘you’re getting the equivalent of a whole serving of fruits and vegetables’, and 'a good source of vitamin C' on the front of the pack.
“But they don’t tell you that by the time you eat the pasta or the pasteurized juice or whatever, it’s actually nutritionally void, and that the vitamins are actually coming from synthetics which they add to make sure they can validate their label claims. Consumers think the nutrition is coming from the fruits and vegetables, but it’s not.”
Testing on finished products shows the nutrients remain intact
By using NutriFusion fruit/veg blends, manufacturers can make these kinds of claims without resorting to this tactic, he said: “We’ve had finished products using our fruit and vegetable blends such as pasta - which has been cooked and shaped and dried at high temperatures by the manufacturer, then boiled again by the consumer - and we’ve had the pasta tested and it still retains the stated levels of vitamin A, C, E and so on.
“We provide heavily concentrated blends of fruits and vegetables that provide a fixed ratio of vitamins, say A, C, E, D and B6. What we don’t do such a good job on - because of the nature of our process - is things like fiber, but these can be very easily added from other sources; our focus is on vitamins.”
The technology involves a ‘natural stabilization process’ to preserve and stabilize the nutrients - which Grand describes as the ‘black box’ part of the technology - but says he “doesn’t use heat, chemicals or synthetics” to process the fruits/veggies (which are processed separately and then subsequently freeze dried and blended).
He added: “A lot of companies sell freeze-dried fruit powders but the magic is that we can preserve the nutrition because of our stabilization process.”
Pasta, snacks, crackers, beverages
Feedback from the industry has been very positive, claimed Grand, who says volumes tripled this year, with growth coming from companies making everything from snacks, pasta, and crackers to beverages, pasta sauces and nutritional supplements.
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