Today’s consumer demands more of their snack food. They’re looking for healthy, energy-sustaining and—yes—delicious, snack and bakery choices, sometimes to even replace a regular meal. These needs don’t necessarily leave out the use of cane sugar, but this pure sweetener comes with challenges of its own, including periodic price fluctuations.

Carolina Innovative Food Ingredients (CIFI) proudly announces that its entire portfolio of sweet potato-based dehydrated, liquid, and syrup ingredients has obtained Non-GMO Project Verified status. 

In the decade between 2003 and 2014, the percentage of kids enjoying a daily sugar- or similarly calorically sweetened beverage fell from nearly 80% to under 61%, and the number of adults doing the same fell from almost 62% down to 50%.

Ingredion Incorporated offers a new line of low-sugar glucose syrups. VERSASWEET™ low-sugar glucose syrups help manufacturers of confectionery, dairy, ice cream and baked good products achieve reduced grams of sugar on the Nutrition Facts panel by formulating with low-sugar corn- or tapioca-based glucose syrups that—compared to standard glucose syrups—have a lower percentage of mono- and disaccharides, also called DP1 + DP2.

Steviva Ingredients will use Supply Side West, Booth #C130, to showcase its new HiPro® Ice Cream Dry Mix, a very timely new product introduction for the dairy industry. The Supply Side West exhibition will be September 27-28, at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. 

These offerings add to CIFI’s portfolio of sweet potato-based ingredients that serve as nutritious additions or replacements in a variety of food and beverage applications.

The high-intensity sweetener (HIS) market is a study in contrasts between Western and Eastern consumers—with one going sour, while the other stays sweet. Although new, natural sweeteners like stevia extract are gaining ground, consumption of high-intensity sweeteners as a class is growing at a negligible rate in North America and Europe, due, in part, to the decline in carbonated soft drink consumption in these regions. In contrast, demand for the entire range of high-intensity sweeteners remains strong in Asia, according to new research from IHS Markit (NASDAQ: INFO), the leading global source of critical information and insight.

Ajinomoto’s zero-calorie sweetener, advantame, has been approved in Canada.  Due to its clean, sugar-like taste, functionality and cost effectiveness, advantame can be used to replace caloric sweeteners and other high-potency sweeteners in foods and beverages while maintaining or enhancing the flavor profile.