Nutrition, diet and health group established at Campden BRI

At this year’s Campden BRI Day in the UK, the visitors who stopped by at the product development exhibits were asked what they thought the food and drinks trends for 2015 would be. Among the  ideas there were suggestions related to the broad topic of products that contribute to a healthy diet. These included exploitation of naturally functional ingredients, the use of seaweed as such an ingredient, and utilisation of various dairy components.

As a result, Campden BRI has pulled together all of its activities to form a new nutrition, diet and health group. Sarah Kuczora, who has coordinated the bringing together of activities, comments: “Our ‘healthy’ product development activities cover salt, fat and sugar reduction, enhancement of fibre, protein and micronutrient content, the use of specific functional ingredients and the application of alternative processing and packaging strategies to promote a ‘healthy’ image. Supporting these headline activities is a range of other services – such as microbiological shelf-life evaluation and challenge testing, and the evaluation of concepts and product quality through sensory panels and consumer acceptance trials. There are also are plethora of chemical analyses that clients may need help with – from the macronutrients (such as proteins, starch and total carbohydrate, and total lipids and specific fatty acids), and vitamins and minerals, to the less defined concepts such as antioxidant capacity.

“And supporting all of these capabilities, we also help companies with a range of consultancy services, legislation advice and off-the-shelf and tailored training courses. In fact, even we were surprised by how much we do that is related to nutrition, diet and health.”