These days, formulators shouldn’t simply seek a trans solution, but also should look at potential future product needs, notes Scott Erickson, marketing manager, Cargill Specialty Canola Oils, Minneapolis. “A lot of people will solve for one thing, and then six to nine months start solving for another thing, and then solve for another thing,” he says. “What happens is the product tends to migrate, and the original product is lost through the whole process. If you can do it all at once, you’re going to save on your R& D, and in 12 to 16 months you’re not going to have to reformulate.”
Manufacturers not only want to remove trans, they want reduced saturated fats. “There’s a lot of 100% palm-based shortenings out there,” says Lynn Lawrence, manager of technical services, ACH Food Companies, Memphis, TN. “We’re looking at blending those with some of the low-saturated-fat liquid oils to get the total saturated fats down to a manageable level.” However, he warns that you can only lower the saturates so far before losing performance.
“It’s not a trivial matter to reduce saturated fat,” says Gerald McNeill, Ph.D., R&D director, Loders Croklaan, Channahon, IL. Adding liquid oils into solid fat, gives “a new set of oil problems” he notes, “the main one being oil migration. Now your shortening is still semisolid, but you’ve got a lot of liquid oil in there, and that tends to move about.” In a chocolate-coated cookie, oil migration will soften the cookie and make the coating sticky and easy to rub off.
McNeill finds incorporating certain palm fractions into the shortening provides the solution. “We’ve come up with a blend of fractions and canola oil that was even better than palm oil,” he says. “When the temperature goes down, it doesn’t get brittle. It’s still plastic and spreadable. It eliminates a lot of the temperature issues while maintaining full functionality, creaming, aeration and with 30% less saturates. This particular product is a drop-in solution for straight palm oil.”