As the demand for alternatives to animal products continues to expand, the market is in need for new ingredients and distribution channels to support the innovation. One company out of Austria – AGRANA – has a potential solution in the form of fiber from potatoes.
Due to its well-developed water-binding properties and texturizing characteristics, the insoluble fiber offers a lot of various additional benefits, when adding fiber into food products for fiber enrichment, including meat alternatives.
Interestingly, one of the other key potential applications is the meat alternatives space. Consumers within this ballooning segment often demand clean label products but can be held back by the long ingredient lists that typically accompany them. Food formulators are challenged to bring body and water-binding properties to products largely composed of popular vegetable proteins such as soy, wheat and pea protein while maintaining clean labels. Agenafiber could be used to replace other fibers, modified starches, cellulose fibers and hydrocolloids. “When producing meat alternatives, you usually need to use a lot of modified ingredients. Here this ingredient can target these products to go onto more natural and organic meat alternatives, to add fiber and body and bind water on top. This is all stuff that has been conventionally available for a long time, however, if you really want to go for natural products, which go in line with the vegan trend, this ingredient makes absolute sense to close this gap,” Schönauer explains.