FDBusiness.com

Fitorex was announced as NuW Excellence Awards winner in Weight and Hunger Management at the recent Health Ingredients Europe event. Close to 40 entries were received for the awards with submissions coming from mainland Europe, Taiwan, China and the United States.

According to the Judging Panel: “Fitorex patented raw material, Yaso® provides a unique story with a natural way to increase the nutritional value of food products, with a soy ingredient of great taste and a very wide application potential that can help to extend the use of soy products.”

Yaso® is a new patented sprouted soya raw material, perfect for bakery, pasta, ready meals, meat or meat free food manufacture. The creators of Yaso® have combined the nutritional composition of soya, the health advantages of sprouted foods and the demand of large scale processing.

Germinated, processed, pasteurised and packaged using patent-protected processes, Yaso® has a neutral aroma and flavour. It is also a source of highly digestible and complete protein, fibre, and has very low content of carbohydrate and no cholesterol. As such, Yaso® is amenable to use in many food products that cater to trends in the European food industry such as gluten-free, lactose-free, cholesterol-free and natural products.

With its gluten free pasta (pictured), Fitorex has also demonstrated that inclusion of Yaso® can reduce the amount of carbohydrates required to create a consumer friendly product; typical gluten-free products have a high content of carbohydrates. The gluten free pasta serves as an ideal basis for the balanced diet, as with YASO the dietary fibre and complete protein content of the pasta can be increased while the carbohydrates will be lower.

Application possibilities of YASO.

While consumer awareness of the benefits of soy protein inclusion in the diet is high in Europe, this advantage is challenged by the inherent properties of soy including organoleptic properties – it adds beany aftertones in the food product – as well as the consumer demand for non-genetically (non-GM) modified raw material and the preservation of all the nutritional components of soy while processing. Fitorex has overcome all these issues with its innovative ingredient Yaso®, which contains all the synergistic beneficial phytonutrients of soy in a single product due to sprouting. The pre treatment of the soy beans by sprouting offers additional benefits like easy digestibility, lower allergenicity and no flatulence that some consumers experience when ingesting soy and soy based products. Additionally, this 100 percent natural product is created from non-GM IP soy.

YASO® is currently being used in a wide range of foods including meat-free, bakery, snack, pasta, functional foods and meat industry applications. Indeed, the unique raw material offers a wide range of product development opportunities within the ‘healthy’ foods segment.