instore - September 2017 - com - 10

Operations

PHO alternatives come
to forefront
By John Unrein and Andy Nelson

n 2015, the United States Food and
Drug Administration announced it
would give food companies three
years to eliminate partially hydrogenated oils (PHOs) from their products.
PHOs are the source of trans fats, which
have been linked to heart disease and
other ailments.

As the 2018 deadline nears, companies
that supply instore delis and bakeries
are continuing their efforts to convert
customers to non-PHO alternatives like
palm oil, canola oil and soy.
Stratas Foods, LLC continues to work on
the optimum applications for all bakery
applications through its own ongoing
and extensive research. Stratas offers
Flex technology, which creates either
palm or soy based shortenings that function more like partially hydrogenated
shortening. Flex involves a process
called functional crystallization, which
makes sure the least amount of crystals

as possible are formed to keep a product
together. Flex processed trans-fat free
shortenings offer smooth and creamy
pliable consistency that rival PHO-based
products from the past. They are easier
to work with throughout the process of
creating cakes and icings, and deliver a
whiter appearance due to smaller average crystal particle distribution.

back to what they enjoyed with PHO
shortenings. Golden Flex is available
for all-purpose, cake and icing and donut frying applications.
"Golden Flex offers PHO utility without
the PHO," says Roger Daniels, vice president of research, development and innovation at Stratas Foods. "This innovation
moves the needle in terms of consistency, stability, firmness, and performance
by leveraging, for the first time, the marriage of Stratas' functional crystallization
with an expanded and more resilient fatty acid platform. Golden Flex achieved
this major step with a soybean oil, rather
than a palm oil based system."

Flex shortenings offer a wider working functional range based on product
temperature, more consistent texture
from cube-to-cube and lot-to-lot and desirable textural properties maintained
over a longer portion of the declared
shelf life, according to Stratas.

Stratas offers more PHO-free solutions beyond Golden Flex. Soy Flex is
a domestic shortening (made from oilseed grown in the United States) that
offers a creamier, more consistent texture with a wider temperature range.
It contains no tropical oils and delivers the functionality benefits of a soybean shortening. Soy Flex is available
for all-purpose, icing, cake and donut
frying applications.

Golden Flex is a new line of zero trans
shortenings made with high oleic soybean oil and the Flex technology. These
shortenings deliver PHO functionality without the trans fat. These new
products offer current palm users the
opportunity to raise their performance

Palm Flex shortenings are creamier,
smoother, more consistent from cube to
cube, and work over a wider temperature range than typical palm shortenings.
Palm Flex shortenings are available for
all-purpose, cake, icing, margarine, and
donut frying applications.
Customers of Lenexa, Kansas-based
Corbion are well underway in the process of converting to non-PHO, says Jim
Robertson, senior product manager for
emulsifiers - if they haven't already
done so.
Corbion was 100% PHO-free by the
end of 2016, Robertson says. "It's allowed us the ability to focus more on
the needs of our customers and work
side by side with them to simplify their
overall reformulation efforts and minimize reformulation hurdles and operational disruptions."

STRATAS FOODS LLC'S FLEX TECHNOLOGY PROVIDES PALM AND SOY ALTERNATIVES TO PHO'S.
PHOTO: STRATAS

10 * SEPTEMBER 2017

commissary INSIDER

That will help ensure customers have
what they need to maintain functionality, preserve product handling and sustain quality attributes that they've come
to expect, Robertson says.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of instore - September 2017