Beneo’s barley beta-glucans meets demand for healthier food and beverages
Beneo’s extension of its fibre portfolio with its first barley beta-glucans ingredient, Orafti β-Fit offers food and beverage makers health benefits, including positive impacts on heart health and blood sugar management.
Orafti β-Fit also allows for fibre enrichment, helping to bridge the fibre gap as well as the potential for use in a wide range of applications including baked goods (such as cakes, muffins, bread, and biscuits), pasta, and cereals, as well as meal replacements. It can also positively impact texture by increasing viscosity, eg, in dairy (alternatives).
Orafti β-Fit is a natural and clean label wholegrain barley flour with 20% beta-glucans. Beneo describes it as a significant extension of the company’s functional fibre product range and is available worldwide.
As a more affordable solution in the beta-glucans category, Orafti β-Fit is on-trend with consumers’ focus on sustainability, with plant-based and wholegrain ingredients.
The ingredients can help meet consumers’ recognition of how diet impacts both short and long-term wellbeing as well as a growing demand for healthier food and beverage options. Even when they are not suffering specific health problems, seven in 10 (69%) consumers across the globe are interested in products that promote heart health [source: HealthFocus International 2021].
A functional ingredient such as barley beta-glucans, with proven health benefits and approved health claims, offers food manufacturers an easy way to create appealing products with convincing front-of-pack communication and a convenient way for consumers to choose nutritional products that positively impact heart health.
Commenting on the launch, Eric Neven, commercial managing director functional fibres at Beneo said: “With its convincing health benefits and approved health claims while being also an economically attractive solution, Orafti β-Fit supports our company’s ambition of connecting nutrition and health. We help food manufacturers develop great tasting products that deliver added value in times of tighter consumer budgets.”
Beta-glucans are viscous and soluble dietary fibres that make the food thicker and therefore delay its passage through the large and small intestines. Their health benefits are backed up by several human intervention studies, but only cereal beta-glucans have approved health claims in Europe and in the US. According to Beneo, beta-glucans from barley contribute to blood sugar management and cardiovascular health. They lower the blood glucose response and, in both short and long-term, the blood cholesterol levels, which are linked to reduced risk for coronary heart disease. These health effects of cereal beta-glucans have been shown in more than 120 scientific studies and have been recognised by official bodies such as EFSA, the FDA, Health Canada and other national authorities with the approval of corresponding health claims.
In keeping with Beneo’s commitment to sustainable business practices, Orafti β-Fit is produced with the use of the entire kernel. There is no waste in production and a 100% valorisation of raw material, with no water resources needed.
