All-Natural Cloudy Beverage Emulsions
Cloudy Connotations
Today’s consumers want it all, especially when it comes to their food and drinks. They want all of the health benefits but without the extra baggage of added ingredients. This demand for beverage with benefits makes recipe formulations more complex than ever before. A few ways the beverage category is catering to these requests is by reducing sugars, cutting calories, and minimizing ingredient lists to familiar, easily recognizable components. One way a beverage communicates functionality is through its cloudy appearance and thicker mouthfeel. Beverages like juice, juice drinks and enhanced waters incorporate specific cloud emulsions in product formulations to invoke the premiumization of freshly-squeezed juices. These same type of emulsions also give the beverage a thicker mouthfeel, further suggestion of ripe, real fruit and vegetable ingredients. However, the most commonly used ingredients for these cloudy connotations are not so label friendly or well-known to consumers. In fact, Sensient recently conducted national research on consumer attitudes toward the three most popular cloudy agents: Gum Arabic, Ester Gum, and Ester of Wood Rosin.“…80% of consumers would be hesitant to purchase a juice or juice drink containing Gum Arabic, Ester Gum, or Ester of Wood Rosin.” @SensientColorAP
The negative perception of these ingredients does not come as a surprise since a vast majority of today’s consumers are seeking out label statements with more familiar and easily recognizable ingredients. Additionally, there are technical challenges when formulating with cloudy emulsions, specifically their compatibility with all of the other emulsions in the recipe. Sometimes, food scientists are working with as many as three different emulsions including a flavor emulsion, colour emulsion, and cloud emulsion. If they are not agreeable with each other; for example, mixing an oil-based emulsion with a water-based one, then you will most likely run into a ringing effect. So there are a lot of unknowns here: unknown ingredients to consumers and unknown compatibility of separate emulsions.
A Simpler Ingredient Statement Solution for Juices, Juice Drinks and Enhanced Waters
At Sensient we spend a lot of time listening to consumers, so we can proactively prepare for what is on the horizon. We’ve spent the last several years preparing to meet the demand for clean-label formulations, and a simple ingredient, cloudy colour solution from fruit and vegetable juices was amongst our priorities. I am happy to introduce our range of turn-key cloudy colour solutions for beverage developers—Smooth Beverage Clouds. Sensient’s Smooth Beverage Clouds use our proprietary emulsion technology to create unique, cloudy colour solutions offering a number of key advantages…1. Fewer Ingredients: Removes Gum Arabic, Ester Gum, and Ester of Wood Rosin. Australia & New Zealand Food Authority, Philippines FDA among other Asian food authorities indicate non-colour components within a colour solutions are considered “Incidental additives” and do not require labeling in food applications unless they provide an additional function to the food.
Combining the cloud and colour into a single-delivery emulsion eliminates the need to label cloud-inducing ingredients, such as Gum Arabic, Ester Gum, and Ester of Wood Rosin.
2. Ingredient Compatibility: Increases overall beverage formulation efficiency by eliminating the complexity of multiple emulsions.
Our standard line of Smooth Clouds beverage solutions delivers beautiful shades of reds, oranges, yellows. Custom shade options like your Superfruit purples or other specific target shades are available as well.
