Experts at the Food Innovation Centre based at the University of Nottingham are helping food and drink manufacturers reduce fat in their products with a new factsheet.
The Fat Reduction Factsheet is the latest in a series of factsheets published by the Food Innovation Centre to help businesses become more sustainable and create healthier food and drink.
It comes amid a growing demand for healthier food, along with efforts by officials to cut the risk of obesity and obesity related conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke.
The new factsheet details which types of fat need reducing or replacing, talks about the challenges in reducing so-called ‘bad fats’, and comes up with ideas of how food and drink manufacturers can incorporate fat replacers in their products that will be acceptable to consumers and will overcome any technical and cost challenges.
It has been put together by research fellow Dr Wentao (Kerry) Liu, one of the team of advisors at the Food Innovation Centre, which supports food and drink businesses in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire with expert advice and guidance.
He said: “Fat reduction in food and drink is a very topical subject and we hope that the Food Innovation Centre’s latest factsheet will be useful to small and medium-sized businesses that are looking to cut the saturated fats in their products.”
The Food Innovation Centre, based at the Bioenergy and Brewing Science building at the University of Nottingham’s Sutton Bonington campus, offers free support to eligible small and medium-sized food and drink manufacturers in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire under the Driving Research and Innovation project - a three-year project that runs until the end of December 2022. Part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) via the D2N2 LEP, the project is run by the Food Innovation Centre at the University of Nottingham School of Biosciences, in conjunction with the Chemistry Innovation Laboratory in the School of Chemistry and Institute for Advanced Manufacturing and in association with the Midlands Engine. It is a unique collaboration project that provides free specialist innovation support to small and medium-sized businesses.
Richard Worrall, who runs the project, said: “We have produced a range of helpful factsheets around sustainable production and healthy eating, and this latest one turns the spotlight on fat reduction. Excessive fat intake causes public health issues, but we also know that there is an increased preference for healthy eating currently, with consumers demanding healthier food, so it makes good commercial sense for businesses to focus on this issue.”