While fats and oils can be formulated to deliver certain functionalities to a finished product, bakers can also take advantage of this tailoring to achieve labeling goals, whether that’s hitting nutrition targets or cleaning up their ingredient list.

“Bakery products that aim for cleaner ingredient lists or improved nutritional profiles can incorporate unique blends of fats and oils that provide the required functionality while using cleaner label or more healthful fat sources,” said Andrea Weis, customer innovation application specialist, AAK USA, Inc.

As bakers have adapted to non-PHO shortenings, they have moved their concerns on to nutritional improvements such as reducing saturated fats. Stratas Foods has been using novel emulsifiers and emulsifier combinations to develop emulsified shortenings with reduced saturated fat.

“Stratas’ Suberb 1020 line is one which has demonstrated success in a variety of functional applications and has the benefit of being on target with consumer demand to reduce saturated fat,” said Roger Daniels, vice president of research, development, innovation and quality for Stratas Foods LLC.

To help bakers reduce calories from fat, Epogee LLC launched its EPG product, an alternative fat technology that can reduce calories from fat by 92% for each unit of fat replaced. This can enable bakers to reduce total caloric value (or total calories) by up to 45% per serving without changing other aspects of the formula.

“As technology has continued to improve, fats and oils can be tailor-made to target specific beneficial attributes based on the intended application,” said Jayme Caruso, chief commercial officer, Epogee.

This article is an excerpt from the September 2020 issue of Baking & Snack. To read the entire feature on fats and oils, click here.