Manufacturers creating better-for-you cereals often choose to sweeten products with fruit ingredients, thus reducing “added-sugar” content. Plus, fruits naturally supply vitamins and other nutrients, and many exert antioxidative properties. “We recently introduced an organic acerola cherry extract,” says Jonas. “Acerola juice has 30 times the vitamin C content of pure orange juice—and this powdered extract has even higher levels of vitamin C than the juice.”
Another healthy ingredient hitting the organic radar is chia. “We are working aggressively with a chia supplier to make organic chia available soon,” says Marroquin. “Our goal is to get chia off the 606 list.
“Chia is loaded with omega-3 fatty acids,” continues Marroquin. “It works well in breakfast cereal formulations as a natural source of omega-3s. Superfoods are the way of the future, and cereals are the perfect delivery vehicle for super ingredients such as chia.”
Manufacturing organic cereals
The cereal manufacturing process is quite forgiving when working with unusual ingredients. One common form of cereal processing is extrusion. “Twin-screw extruders offer exceptional flexibility for processors to create new products, modify existing products, tweak ingredient formulations or substitute ingredient types, and most manufacturers offer retrofit kits that provide additional options,” says Mike Shaw, Eastern regional sales manager, Clextral Inc., Tampa, FL. “In addition, processors can test products at extruder manufacturers’ R&D centers and produce breakfast cereals for consumer evaluation. This allows the breakfast-cereal processor to take advantage of the manufacturers’ expertise in processing different ingredients, and can minimize their development costs.
“Whole grains are often used in organic products because they offer healthful attributes and appeal to health-conscious consumers,” continues Shaw. “Yet whole grains do not offer the same expansion as refined flours. However, this is not a major issue, because of the precise process control available with twin-screw extrusion. The twin-screw extruder’s precise temperature regulation, with heating and cooling functions in each barrel, as well as use of the many barrel injection ports and variety of screw profiles, can provide optimal processing of these grains and offer the flexibility to make parameter adjustments to get the desired product characteristics.”
Marroquin sums up the organic cereal development process quite well: “When you go organic, you have to be more nimble on your feet. Don’t look at it like ‘organic’ prevents you from using certain ingredients. Look at it as being guided in making the best choice for our planet.”
Donna Berry, president of Chicago-based Dairy & Food Communications, Inc., a network of professionals in business-to-business technical and trade communications, has been writing about product development and marketing for 13 years. Prior to that, she worked for Kraft Foods in the natural-cheese division. She has a B.S. in food science from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. She can be reached at
donnaberry@dairy-food.com