BLOG: MIXING IT UP WITH NEW FLAVOURS
Fruit and vegetables look set to change food and beverage products – but not in the way you might expect. Curious consumers are demanding more than ever from the things they eat and drink. It’s not too much to ask for your cake with a side of excitement, is it? Pairing unexpected combinations of fruit and vegetables in sweet and savoury applications is creating unpredictable tastes – and they’re worth trying.
The trends of premiumization, healthy indulgence and ‘clean label’ mean we’re no longer happy just with the same old things, year after year. Sophisticated fruit flavour combinations, such as raspberry and mascarpone cakes, peach and ginger iced tea or beetroot and chocolate biscuits, are becoming a permanent fixture on supermarket shelves.
Vegetables can add an extra element of intrigue to sweet food and beverage products, as well as savoury. Cucumber, pumpkin and kale is an example of one unusual combination in both dairy and sweet goods applications that now holds wide appeal.
Innovating by incorporating fruit and vegetables means that manufacturers need to be able to formulate with these ingredients without spoiling them in production. But how? Leave it with us – the expert team at SVZ is on-hand to provide new product development advice. Selecting the right fruit and vegetable crops means that appealing flavours can be created without affecting texture, opening the doors for more combinations.
In case you were still in any doubt, another benefit of fruit and vegetables is that they can bring a healthy halo to products. In yoghurt, for example, it is possible to achieve natural sweetness and a lower calorie count, with ingredient combinations such as beetroot and black carrot, pumpkin and sweet potato, carrot or green vegetables. A winning formula for reformulation: an element of surprise and clean label ingredients.
The tasty future is looking bright, filled with fruit and vegetable combinations that stand out on the shelves. Get in touch to find out more about new flavour opportunities with the SVZ portfolio.
