Food trends: free from sugar, gluten, e-codes... and worries!

4th of January, 2024, Food, Health & Wellbeing

Consumers have various dietary needs, whether due to ethical considerations, allergies, food sensitivities, or personal health goals. To stay on top of competition, food and beverage manufacturers need to offer a variety of free from options. From supplying staple ingredients like psyllium husk fiber and pea protein to tailoring innovative compound solutions together with our clients, Haarla is the Expert at your side when it comes to clean-label and free from products.

Free from: dairy & meat alternatives

Plant-based alternatives to dairy and meat have become more and more mainstream and are often consumed side by side with animal-based products.

Haarla’s selection of free from dairy ingredients includes plant-based proteins, such as pea and sunflower protein. We also supply non-dairy compound solutions that offer a straightforward way for food manufacturers to bring a new product to the market. The compound mixes come in handy when developing, for example, dairy free puddings and protein snacks. With our ready-to-use compound solutions, stabilization, taste, and addition of protein can be achieved without tedious R&D. This enables a quick and easy entry to the market, also with smaller volumes.

Advantages of natural extracts

Sunflower protein is made from hulled sunflower kernels by cold pressing and grinding them into fine flour. With its mild nutty taste, sunflower protein is a highly nutritious protein that contains all nine essential amino acids and a low quantity of antinutritional factors.

To ensure a pleasant mouthfeel and juiciness in free from meat products, we offer plant-based fibers and modified starches. Our potato and pea fiber solutions enhance the texture of meat analogue products, while the modified starches improve their water-binding capacity, preventing dryness in meat-free foods.

Free-from alternatives for beverage, confectionary, and bakery industries.

The demand for clean label products is on the rise. Developing foods that are free from e-codes and still look and taste as good as their regular counterparts is worth the effort. For example, coloring foodstuff without e-codes can be achieved with natural extracts from fruit or vegetables. Haarla’s clean label starches, in turn, act as binding and thickening agents, in bakery products, puddings, and meat analogues, to name a few.

Haarla Advantages of natural extracts
Stevia

Stevia stands out as a leading safe and natural sugar alternative, securing FDA approval as early as 2008. Projections indicate a robust growth trajectory for the global Stevia market, with an anticipated compound annual growth rate of 10.8% from 2023 to 2028.

Manufacturers in the beverage and confectionary industries benefit from Haarla’s wide range of different natural flavors and natural flavoring compounds that are free from artificial sweeteners. Active flavoring solutions boost and accentuate the product’s inherent sweetness and reduce the need for added sugar or artificial sweeteners. In turn, some manufacturers look specifically for sugar-free alternatives. This is when our range of sweeteners such as sorbitol and stevia come in handy.

Haarla also offers different staple ingredients for gluten-free baking. Our tapioca starch – available both as native and modified starch – and psyllium husk powder come from trusted sources and undergo an external pesticide analysis to ensure their safety.

Your one-stop-shop for free from solutions

Haarla offers a wide array of quality raw materials for developing products to suit all dietary needs. Our ingredients can be tailored to each manufacturer’s specific needs, ensuring a smooth process from initial idea to final product. The Haarla Food team experts are at your service.