Low-in foods texture measurement

With growing health consciousness and regulatory pressure worldwide, manufacturers are reformulating bakery, dairy, snack, and meat products to reduce fat, sugar, and salt. Consumers want healthier foods that still deliver the same familiar texture and taste they enjoy.

Reformulating is complex: ingredients like sugar do more than sweeten – they add bulk and affect mouthfeel; salt influences dough strength and shelf life; fat contributes to creaminess and product structure. Balancing these factors requires deep expertise and careful innovation.

Low-fat products

• Fat removal changes creaminess, thickness, and mouthfeel – particularly in yoghurts and dairy desserts.
• Many markets demand thicker, creamier textures, but preferences vary globally.
• Fat replacement or adjustments can impact product consistency – texture testing ensures replacements deliver the desired sensory experience.

Sugar reduction

• Sugar acts as both sweetener and bulking agent, impacting firmness in products like jams and chewiness in gums.
• Reformulating for low sugar often alters hardness, flexibility, and stickiness.
• Substitutes like mannitol improve mechanical strength but must be tested for consumer acceptability.

Low-salt formulations

• Salt enhances firmness and “bite” in cooked meats and strengthens dough for desirable bread structure and volume.
• Reducing salt can cause softer dough, weaker crumb structure, and faster staling.
• Monitoring bread volume and texture across shelf life prevents quality loss.

As consumers become more demanding and reduce further their purchases of foods containing ingredients they deem unhealthy, the need for revisiting recipes is set to grow. Understanding how these reformulations can impact finished products is crucial to minimising adverse textural effects and identifying strategies for retaining the mouthfeel people love.

There is a clearly huge amount of trial and error (or an iterative approach) involved in developing and assessing new formulations. When reformulating your products you will be looking for changes that show as little impact as possible. Understanding the impact on texture, and the potential implications of these texture changes, is crucial in ensuring new product launches aren’t a miss with consumers.

Texture analysis is vital for R&D and quality control to:

• Objectively measure changes in firmness, crispiness, springiness, and stickiness
• Compare reformulated products to traditional “gold standard” recipes
• Guide ingredient adjustments and process optimisation
• Ensure consistent quality across production batches and shelf life

As with any manufacturing innovation, a large amount of research takes place during development, but the end product must also go through a quality control process to assess its mechanical (and sensorial) properties. A Texture Analyser is a crucial part of this procedure, giving a reliable way to test products by applying a choice of compression, tension, extrusion, adhesion, bending or cutting tests to measure their physical or textural properties e.g. firmness, stickiness, crispiness and springiness, to name but a few.

Tools and tests tailored to your needs

• Range of Texture Analysers for different force and size requirements
• Probes and attachments including Ottawa Cells for crispness, bending rigs for biscuits, and back extrusion for dairy texture
• Tested applications in bakery, meat, confectionery, and dairy

A Back Extrusion Rig, for example, offers an invaluable measure of product consistency and the effects of fat reduction which can be used to compare, for example, a full-fat yoghurt recipe with a reduced-fat version to determine any textural differences. When this difference is objectively measured and quantified, other ingredients to alter texture can be trialled, making it possible to perfect texture in low-fat foods, which can be frequently measured for quality control across varieties and batches and also throughout a product’s lifespan.

A Texture Analyser also provides the ability to test chewing gum at various stages of its life, from the initial bite to the first few chews and beyond. Measuring through the final chew stage ensures a better understanding of consumer experience, and comparisons to gums with added sugar can clearly show the changes the formulation can cause.

To gauge the impact of a salt reduction programme on dough quality, for example, samples can be prepared and tested prior to bulk preparation using a Warburtons Dough Stickiness System to identify the ideal formulation.

Around the world there have been several pieces of research published in the areas of dairy, confectionery, bakery and meat products – all known for their popular high calorie offerings and all looking for solutions to offering a lower fat/sugar counterpart without a textural compromise. Here’s how they’ve applied their Texture Analyser.

Low-in research in the bakery industry

• Selection of appropriate hydrocolloid for eggless cakes containing chubak root extract using multiple criteria decision-making approach
• Can a structured emulsion (fat in water‐fiber system) substitute saturated fat in cookies without hampering their quality?
• Chia gel as fat substitute for producing low fat cake

Low-in research in the meat industry

In the meat industry the use of different sources of materials (mostly from plants) as a fat replacer to ensure palatability required by consumers is not an easy task. Many different ideas have been investigated in a wide range of meat products.

• Different Maturities and Varieties of Coconut (Cocos nucifera L.) Flesh as Fat Replacers in Reduced-Fat Meatballs
• Influence of additives on rheological and textural properties of cellulose based fat mimetic
• Composite Gel Fabricated with Konjac Glucomannan and Carrageenan Could Be Used as a Cube Fat Substitute to Partially Replace Pork Fat in Harbin Dry Sausages (PDF)
• Characterisation of Enriched Meat-Based Pâté Manufactured with Oleogels as Fat Substitutes (PDF)
• Partial fat replacement in liver pâté using canola oil organogel

Low-in research in the confectionery industry

• Reduction of saturated fat in chocolate by using sunflower-hydroxypropyl methylcellulose based oleogels as a partial cocoa butter replacer in chocolates
• Effect of stevia, xylitol, and corn syrup in the development of velvet tamarind (Dialium indum L.) chewy candy

Low-in research in the dairy industry

• Improvement of physicochemical properties of reduced‐cholesterol butter by the addition of β‐sitosteryl oleate
• Double emulsions fortified with plant and milk proteins as fat replacers in cheese