Meet our challenge solver - Marie McRoberts

Challenge

The combination of a busy lifestyle and the necessity of a healthy, balanced diet is prompting consumers to seek ways to increase their nutritional intake with low-effort everyday meals. Food companies looking to tap into this trend must be innovative if they want to maximize nutrients in every bite.

With our strong expertise in the health and nutrition market, we saw this trend of nutrient-dense foods as the perfect opportunity to capitalize on our formulation know-how. How did we leverage our market and technical expertise to support a customer in developing a range of nutritious mac and cheese boxes that are typically high in carbohydrates but low in other nutrients?

Solution

Keeping tabs on the evolving market trends in food, we understood that consumers wanted meals that were high in nutrition, low in preparation time, economical, and, above all, tasty. Instant meals packed with whole food nutrients are quickly becoming a go-to choice for the consumer. Meals whose nutritional value aligns with Reference Daily Intake (RDI) – the recommended daily nutrient intake and obtained from whole food ingredients such as broccoli, sweet potato, spinach, etc., are seen as a reliable choice. This way they can consume a complete meal rich in carbs, vitamins and minerals, and protein, without supplementing their diet.

While creating mixed-ingredient formulations under our proprietary brand Daminaide®, we have garnered the knowledge to develop a wide range of enrichment blends tailored to customer specifications. Our expertise in boosting the nutritional content of the food product was instrumental in crafting the recipe for a delicious pasta with a rich nutritional profile.

Our sourcing team, backed by a global network of supply partners, identified the ingredients crucial to the formulation of the blend. This greatly helped our R&D team, who diligently worked in our in-house application laboratory to finetune to customer specifications and continuously test it to achieve the targeted nutrition label. The proficient technical team adjusted the blend several times: carefully balancing nutritional content with compelling taste. Additionally, consistency in the texture of the pasta and the powder mix was equally important so as not to jeopardize conveniently short cooking times. A couple of iterations later, the team created a blend that made a delectable and healthy bowl of pasta!

Since then, the customer has approached us with similar challenges, and we have been adapting the formulation for other end applications.