Symrise unveils Symlife taste balancing series for healthier ranges
Top view on wooden table with variety of healthy raw vegan candies, nuts and dates bowls. Fitness desserts, confectionery background and eating right concept
Fragrances and flavours group Symrise has released its symlife platform, developed for its taste balancing solutions helping create healthier product ranges for segments including confectionery and snacks, writes Neill Barston.
As the company explained to Confectionery Production, tailored solutions fit the specific needs of food and beverage manufacturers, in areas such as sugar reduction within chocolate and sweets ranges.
While consumers consider taste a key reason for selecting product ranges, at the same time, health has also become a top priority, with shoppers, retailers and regulators increasingly aware of the detrimental effects of high sugar, sodium, and fat intake.
When manufacturers reduce these ingredients in their products they can also achieve clean, authentic taste that make them unique and appealing with the help of symlife solutions. By carefully optimising a product’s overall flavour profile, the company’s new system aims to help manufacturers close the taste gap of products with reduced sugar, salt and fat content.
Moreover, the symlife portfolio can help masking undesirable notes like bitterness or astringency while improving mouth feel, juiciness and fruitiness, building umami or adding further sensations. Meeting the taste expectations of consumers can pose certain challenges.
Taste perception involves a complex process with multisensory interactions. Any change in the food or beverage matrix can result in a taste gap that will affect consumer appeal. The multi-facetted symlife ‘s toolbox can close this gap.
“Achieving great overall taste in sugar-reduced food and beverages can be complex. Our expertise in natural taste balancing helps manufacturers to develop low sugar and low calorie products that combine health benefits with great taste. This achieves the elusive goal of making highly appealing tastes part of a healthy, sustainable diet” explains Leif Jago, Global Marketer at Symrise.
According to the company, the platform represents a holistic, natural approach to taste balancing. It draws on in-house selection, breeding and cultivation to identify part of the natural taste balancing raw materials. It also uses AI to decode ancient Chinese recipes, for example. It supports the circular economy by developing natural taste balancing materials from side streams, and investing in backwards integration and cultivation.
“Symlife brings a holistic approach to taste balancing. With this approach, it draws on our unique expertise, extensive research in consumer and sensory perception and a deep understanding of natural sweetness”, adds Leif Jago.
The platform builds on the company’s extensive portfolio, and its dedication to quality and innovation by forming close, ongoing collaborations with academia, research institutes and technology networks. It also provides manufacturers with invaluable assistance and expertise in navigating the complex regulatory landscape and compliance with ever-changing global regulations.
“We believe in working with our customers as a trustworthy and forward-thinking partner with a broad, superior natural portfolio providing cost-effective, sensorial proven and customisable taste balancing flavour solutions. We also offer added value services such as technical and regulatory consultancy that enable successful formulation and re-formulation of great tasting sugar-reduced food and beverages”, concludes Jago.
As the business notes, developing products that combine taste and health benefits – with particular emphasis on replacing sugar – has proved particularly challenging within the sector, which was a core reason for creating the company’s new platform. It considers the entire taste dynamics of a product and balance its overall profile according to the product’s specific needs.
This enables manufacturers to react with agility to trends and take significant steps towards attracting consumers with stand-out products that address health benefits, and also continue to satisfy or exceed their complex and discerning taste expectations
