Cyclodextrins – Solutions For Various Food Applications

They can mask taste or smell, stabilize emulsions and allow the food industry to avoid the use of eggs or animal fats in fine bakery wares and savory spreads: Cyclodextrins offer a multitude of functionalities. Dr. Ulrike Fischer-Nägele, Head of Technical Service Nutrition at WACKER BIOSOLUTIONS, discusses which solutions WACKER’s cyclodextrins contribute for the current challenges of the food industry.

- Ulrike Fischer-Nagele

Life Style and Eating Habits

Rising affluence, changing age patterns and growing health awareness are three key reasons underlying fundamental changes in our eating habits in recent years. “Better for the planet”, “better for my health” and “better for me”: Today’s consumers want healthy, sustainably manufactured products with no ethical concerns that are completely tailored to their needs – and they want all that without compromising quality or taste. Recent market studies confirm this development. Sugar-free desserts, dairy alternatives such as soy, rice and almond milk, gluten- and egg-free baked goods, and foods that are low in fat or vegan – i.e. free of animal products – are clearly trending.

If it is to offer these kinds of products, the food industry needs powerful production methods and ingredients – like cyclodextrins. Derived from corn starch, these sugar molecules can be used in food production in a wide variety of ways: they protect valuable ingredients during processing and storage, improve the aroma and flavor of food by masking unwanted or overpowering flavors, stabilize creamy emulsions and improve the texture and consistency of spreads and frostings.

Longtime Expertise

In the early 1980s, WACKER – the Munich-based chemical and biotechnology group – started to devote its efforts to cyclodextrin research and marketing. Following the market launch of cyclodextrins in the early 1990s, WACKER began to produce them on an industrial scale in its US-based plant in Eddyville, Iowa, in 1999. Today, WACKER is a global market leader and the only company to produce and market all three native cyclodextrins – alpha-, beta- and gamma-cyclodextrin – worldwide under the CAVAMAX® brand, figure 1.

Egg-Free Fine Bakery Wares and Spreads