Nutritious and Delicious

Michelle Schwenk, Food Scientist
Michelle has worked with Tate & Lyle, Decatur, IL, for 10 years. She holds a master's degree in food science from the University of Illinois and is a member of a number of professional organizations, including the American Association of Candy Technologists and the Institute of Food Technologists.Michelle has published articles on sugar-free products, innovative processing techniques and starch in confections. Before joining Tate & Lyle, Michelle worked for Crest Foods, Ashton, IL, a dairy stabilizer company.

Several years ago, I was asked to be a part of a special new team at Tate & Lyle, the PROMITOR™ Soluble Corn Fiber team. I have been part of the process of identifying and commercializing this ingredient from nearly the beginning. I enjoy working on a product that helps the consumer and helps make products more nutritious.

PROMITOR™ Soluble Corn Fiber was a brilliant idea in its simplicity. Tate & Lyle wanted to make not just ingredients, but ingredients that helped people live better, i.e., wellness products. As we have always been carbohydrate experts, fiber was a natural next step. We have 100 years of experience in corn syrup processing technology and used it to make a corn syrup with a high level of indigestible bonds, or fiber.

I remember making an orange juice that had 20g of fiber in a serving. It was still delicious, though probably not commercially feasible. We pushed the limits of this new fiber ingredient and found very few. One example of using it in an existing application would be this whole grain cracker I am snacking on as I write this. It contains 5g of whole grains per serving, but it only has 1g of fiber. Substituting PROMITOR™ Soluble Corn Fiber could easily increase the fiber content without changing the label, or the cracker itself.

I knew from the start that we had something exciting and challenging as we had dialed-in functionality that would have nearly universal application. Working with this ingredient from conception to commercialization has been wonderful. This has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my career, and it is even more special now that I am seeing products on the store shelf utilizing PROMITOR™ Soluble Corn Fiber to deliver health benefits to consumers.