Confectionary - Articles and news items

Nestlé confectionery Journey with colours

Issue 6 2010 / 15 December 2010 / Steve Tolliday, Principal Product Technologist, Nestlé Product and Technology Centre

Colour in food is important. It is one of the drivers for the consumer in selecting specific foods and when combined with flavour and texture, adds to the overall enjoyment of the consumption of food. Historically, confectionery has been full of bright, exciting colours to ensure its appeal to the young and the young at heart. Confectionery needs to be fun, exciting, bright and cheerful to fulfil the consumers’ expectations; poor colour equals a dull product in both senses of the word.

Many of our Nestlé products have colour as one of their key attributes. Products such as Smarties, Rowntrees, Allens, Jojo and Wonka have created a consumer expectation for these brands which have colour at their heart. (more…)

Benefit of chewing: Current evidence and future direction

Issue 4 2010 / 26 August 2010 / Taichi Inui, Technology Scientist, Wrigley Science Institute

Oral stimuli, such as flavour, taste and mastication, have been suggested to impact both oral and systemic health. Chewing gum, as a non-nutritive source of such oral stimuli, may serve as a food surrogate and help control adverse health conditions related to food intake, such as caries and obesity. Recent studies have shown potentials as well as challenges in impacting human physiology and psychology by non-nutritive mastication.

Oral food processing is an inevitable step in food digestion and thus intake of nutrients. While there is no direct contribution for nutrient intake by masticating elastic substances, there is a relatively long history of humans chewing natural gums, such as chicle in Central America and mastic in Greece. Chewing gum typically consists of three main ingredients: gum base to provide texture, sweeteners to provide taste, and flavours to provide a pleasant note in addition to taste. Thus, while gum chewing has little impact on intake of nutrients, there are multiple oral stimuli provided by chewing gum. Indeed, gum chewing provides a unique experience in which the consumer can enjoy oronasal stimulation as well as exercising their facial muscles without ingestion of food. These combinations of orofacial sensory stimulation without significant caloric and nutrient intake provide chewing gum a unique position in the food industry.

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Microbiological safety of chocolate confectionery products

Issue 4 2009 / 12 December 2009 / Anett Winkler, Corporate Microbiology, Kraft Foods R&D

For many years, low moisture foods, such as chocolate, were regarded as microbiologically safe due to the inherent product characteristics. Water activity levels below 0.6 would prevent any microbial growth, whereas water activities below 0.85 would prevent proliferation of pathogenic / toxin formation by toxigenic microorganisms[1]. A water activity of >0.6 and <0.85 would potentially allow for xerophilic yeasts / moulds growth that are of importance in spoilage of those foods. In addition to the low water activity, other antimicrobial parts of the ingredients had been thought to contribute to the microbiological safety of those products[2].

It was in the early 1970′s when the first outbreaks of Salmonella could be traced back to low moisture products, especially chocolate[3,4]. Since then, several low moisture foods have been implicated in outbreaks: oat cereals[5], flavoured potato chips[6], peanut butter[7], Halva (Tahini)[8] and infant formula[9]. In all cases, Salmonella was the microorganism causing the disease, thus making it the main pathogen of concern for those foods[10]. Further analyses and investigations of the involved foods revealed that in low moisture foods, very minute amounts of living Salmonella seem to be sufficient to cause illnesses. Data from outbreaks suggest the concentration of Salmonella in the implicated foods was as low as 0.005 CFU/g of product[11]. One common property of foods that exhibited this unusually low infective dose was low moisture and high fat where the cells were embedded in a fatty matrix. This combination of properties allowed the Salmonella to pass through the stomach[12] whereby they infected the intestine. In addition to the low infective dose studies showing the survival of pathogens in confectionery products, raw materials demonstrated long term survival, over a period of several months, in these matrixes[13,14]. (more…)

Surface energy analysis of food moulding and demoulding

Issue 2 2009 / 1 June 2009 / Jianshe Chen, Senior Lecturer, School of Food Science and Nutrition, University of Leeds

Moulding and demoulding is a processing operation commonly used in the manufacturing of candy and confectionary products for two main purposes: setting and shaping/forming. During moulding, a food material in the form of either flowable fluid (such as a melted sugar solution, a melted gel, etc) or semi-solid (such as biscuit dough) is poured or pressed into the mould. For a semi-solid food, product shaping and formation into a desired geometry is probably the main purpose.

However, for a fluid food, moulding will involve a phase change (setting) as well as shaping and forming. The fluid food would set or solidify through either cooling or thermal treatments. For example, in the manufacturing of chocolate bars, tempered chocolate of approximately 30°C is poured into the mould and then cooled down to between 15 – 20°C for solidification and crystallisation. The set chocolate is then separated from the mould, usually by gently tapping the mould or by slightly twisting the mould. This process is usually known as demoulding. (more…)