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Nutritional snack bars are a popular consumer product – meeting the growing need for on-the-go healthy snacks. For manufacturers, improved dietary components such as no added sugars and high fruit and fibre content are increasing the appeal and variety of snack bars in the market place. However formulators face difficulties with hard to source fruits, and with fruit formats that impose constraints. Typically, the requirement for high quality fruit filling ingredients can’t be matched with bake stability and low water activity and manufacturers have had to resort to imitation and / or artificial products.
Fortunately today, the URC range of pieces and pastes provide cereal bar manufacturers with a versatile and robust way to add real fruit to their products in a great range of fruit and flavour blends. The unique formulation and design can provide a full portion of fruit per serving, as well as meeting the needs of manufacturing functionality of bake stability and low water activity.
Bake stable fruit bar fillings have increased integrity under heat and won’t boil out of the end of the bar during baking therefore preventing burning or caramelizing issues. Water activity levels of under 0.65 ensure minimal moisture transfer occurs to prevent spoilage and extends shelf stability. URC fruit bar filling pastes are a convenient option when superior fruit flavours and fruit content claims are critical.
Fruit bar fillings are manufactured via a proprietary Ultra Rapid Concentration process which reduces raw fruit materials to less than 10% moisture in under 60 seconds. This means the fruit ingredients experience minimal residence time and the rapid cooling process preserves that fruit flavor, colour and goodness of fruit – naturally. Unlike freezer, barrel or sun-dried fruits, the texture remains soft and delicious – with out the use of artificial additives or preservatives. Easy to use and available in pumpable drums Ultra Rapid Concentration is creating a new way to include real fruit bar fillings in snack and baked bars.
URC fruit bar fillings can be used as a soft fruity centre in a baked bar, as a sheeting paste to create a visible fruit layer, or as blending paste in formed bars to reduce added sugar content and provide cleaner ingredient listings.
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Source by Amy Wright