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Navigating Nutritional Balance in Baked Goods

10 Sep 2024

Health & Well-Being
Article

Creating nutritionally balanced food products is crucial for both consumer health and the success of your bakery business. By embracing innovative approaches and smart ingredient substitutions, bakers and pastry producers can enhance the nutritional value of their goods without sacrificing taste. Read on to discover how you can meet the growing demand for healthier options.

Understanding nutritional balance

Nutritional balance refers to consuming appropriate amounts of all essential nutrients without overemphasizing one nutrient at the expense of others.

A balanced diet provides the body with the right proportion of nutrients needed for optimal health and functioning.

How do you maintain nutritional balance?

The principles of a healthy diet, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), are to consume…

  • less than 50g of sugar per day
  • less than 65g of fat per day
  • less than 5g salt per day
  • at least 400g of fruit and vegetables per day
  • at least 25g of fiber per day

How to create more nutritional baked goods

For producers of baked goods, there are 2 key areas to prioritize to better help promote nutritional balance:

  1. Reducing salt, fat, and sugar content where possible.
  2. Adding good-for-you ingredients like real fruit and fiber-rich ingredients like wholegrains and seeds.

At Puratos, we offer innovative solutions for every layer of the finished good to help bakers, pastry and cake producers optimize the overall nutritional value of their products without compromising on functionality, taste, or texture.

Reducing sugar

Discover all Puratos sugar-reduced products here: Puratos Sugar Reduced

Sugar is also the #1 ingredient consumers want to reduce in their diets as excessive sugar consumption can be associated with a higher risk of developing obesity and several other non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, dental cavities, and more.

Puratos solutions:

These solutions offer a sugar reduction claim in a finished product without compromising functionality and sensory experience.

We offer 2 categories of sugar-reduced solutions:

  • Complete or concentrated mixes
    For example, our Tegral Satin Cream Cake Sugar Reduced delivers a 35% sugar reduction (on average).
  • Modular solutions
    For example, our Acti Sugar Reduction is a clean-label cake improver that enables sugar reduction up to 35%. It also offers the possibility of adding a ‘source of fiber’ claim.

Reducing fat

Excessive consumption of fat, especially saturated and trans fats, may be associated with a higher risk of developing obesity and other health issues like diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.

Producing baked goods with lower levels of fat is a great way we can improve the long-term health of consumers.

Puratos solutions:

In line with WHO guidelines, we aim to reduce fats, especially those of poor nutritional quality such as trans fats, or replace them with fats of good nutritional quality.

We offer 2 categories of fat-reduced solutions:

  • Fillings

    For example, Cremfill Ultim is a range of water-based nut and chocolate fillings with up to 70% less fat compared to fat-based fillings.

  • Sweet bakery mixes & improvers

    For example, Intens Puraslim is a clean-label technology that enables up to 50% fat reduction in soft & sweet bread recipes.

Discover all Puratos fat-reduced products here: Puratos Fat Reduced

Reducing salt

Discover all Puratos salt-reduced products here: Puratos Salt Reduced

Our solutions to reduce the salt content in baked goods enable a salt reduction claim to be added to a finished good without compromising on functionality or sensory experience.

We offer 2 categories of salt-reduction solutions:

  1. Complete or concentrated mixes - e.g. some local solutions that offer ready-to-bake breads with 25% salt reduction.
  2. Modular solutions - e.g. S500 Salt Reduction: the best-performing improver on the market for salt reduction, delivering 25% less salt without compromising on taste.

More fruit, less of the rest

We strive to increase the fruit content of our fruit fillings wherever possible. This helps consumers reach their recommended daily content of fruit but also aims to meet consumer demand - our Taste Tomorrow research shows that 64% of consumers believe food with fruit fillings to be healthy.

Our range of fruit fillings with a minimum fruit content of 50% will help improve the nutritional values of pastry, cakes and bakery applications and will appear more appealing to health-conscious consumers.

Explore our fruit-filling range here:

Topfil
Topfil Finest
Vivafil X-Tend 30% Sugar Reduced

Improving fiber content

Dietary fiber is a complex carbohydrate that cannot be fully digested in the gut. Fiber is essential for a healthy diet and for your overall health. Fiber can also help to reduce sugar and fat content in baked goods. Read more about the health benefits of fiber and our solutions.

One of the ways we can help consumers reach their recommended daily fiber intake is by promoting whole-grain bread to our customers.

Puratos products such as Puravita, Softgrain, Sproutgrain, and GrainDesign can all help create great-tasting, high-fiber products.

Interested in one of our solutions? Contact your local sales representative today!