Beneo’s Orafti® β-Fit barley flour enriches snacks with beta-glucans, supporting fibre and heart health claims in a clean label, versatile solution
Beta-glucans are the perfect solution to enhance snacks by introducing dietary fibre and heart health advantages. By incorporating this plant-based ingredient, they become eligible for approved health claims. Make hearts glow with joy and discover how these benefits can be translated into practice!
Most consumers worldwide understand the connection between heart health and their overall well-being.1 For example, 7 out of 10 European consumers show interest in products that support heart health, even if they don’t have specific health concerns.2 As a result, providing snacks with approved health claims presents a compelling opportunity for manufacturers.
To achieve this in an easy and affordable way, incorporating beta-glucans from barley into recipes is the way to go. Barley beta-glucans are viscous, soluble, fermentable dietary fibres with scientifically proven benefits for heart health. Because of this, they also enable fibre enrichment and corresponding claims.
Beta-glucans generate a high viscosity, which makes the food thicker and slows its passage through the gastro-intestinal tract. This delays the uptake of glucose from food, lowering the blood glucose response.3 In addition, the high viscosity lowers the uptake of bile acids and thereby reduces blood cholesterol concentration4, helping to cut the risk of coronary heart disease.
Snacks enriched with these functional ingredients provide advantages not only for consumers but also for producers. With more than 120 scientific studies demonstrating the beta-glucan health effects from cereals, official bodies including EFSA, the FDA and Health Canada have approved corresponding health claims.5
The BENEO-Technology Center developed multiple recipes with beta-glucans that can carry high fibre and EU health claims, like “Barley beta-glucan has been shown to lower/reduce blood cholesterol. High cholesterol is a risk factor in the development of coronary heart disease”. This claim can be used for foods that provide at least 1 g of barley beta-glucan per quantified portion. The beneficial effect is obtained with a daily intake of 3 g barley beta-glucan. One of those developed recipes are mouth-watering multi-grain biscuits. Not only do they offer health benefits, but also a desired texture and great taste.
BENEO, a leading producer of functional ingredients, offers barley beta-glucans in the form of Orafti® β-Fit, a clean label, non-GMO, vegan-friendly wholegrain barley flour with a beta-glucan content of 20% on dry matter. Orafti® β-Fit can be used in a wide variety of applications. Some snack solutions can include baked goods like biscuits, muffins, cookies and cakes as well as extruded cereals. Also in dairy and dairy alternatives it can serve as a clean label texturiser.
BENEO’s Customer Technical Support Manager, Dr Isabel Trogh, sheds even more light on this versatile ingredient: “Orafti® β-Fit is a cost-effective ingredient that offers technical advantages alongside health benefits for consumers. As well as having a neutral colour and taste, it is pH and temperature stable. When reformulating recipes with Orafti® β-Fit, in some cases, small adjustments, like adding a bit more water, might be necessary. But most applications allow for a simple 1:1 replacement of the original flour ingredient, e.g., wheat flour, with our wholegrain beta-glucan rich barley flour.”
Discover the full recipe of our multi-grain biscuits with Orafti® β-Fit and get inspired for your next product innovation.
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