It must surely be clear to you that fruit powders are the best option for making your natural ingredients even more appealing while providing flavour, colour and even nutrients. But one questions can be asked, “Are all fruit powders equal?”
The objective of this article is to present the different fruit powders and the impact of drying technologies [3] [1] used on the final product and the product being formulated.
Atomisation is a method used for drying a liquid in powder form by passing through a hot air flow. Fruit juice or concentrated juice is thus dried in atomisers creating fine powdered fruit. [2]
The advantages of atomised powders:
Inconveniences include:
These atomised powders are ideally suited for the manufacturing of food supplements (capsules and tablets) along with powder form instant drinks.
Fruit juice or fruit concentrate are dried in vacuum tunnels.
The advantages of dried under vacuum powders include:
Inconveniences include:
These dried under vacuum powders are particularly adapted to the formulating of instant drinks or to-be-diluted nutrition products.
Freeze drying operates by sublimation of whole frozen fruit; water goes from a solid state to vapour (without passing through a liquid state), which enables maintaining the wholeness of the fruit. [2]
Advantages of freeze-dried powders include:
Inconveniences include:
Freeze dried ingredients are adapted to the formulation of top-quality products requiring the incorporation of pieces of fruit along with products requiring high nutrient contents with no added sugars (maltodextrin etc...)
In this last process, fruit juice or concentrated juice is dried at high temperatures on immense rollers. [2]
The advantages of powders dried on rollers include:
Inconveniences include:
Powders obtained can be easily incorporated into food supplements in capsule form although they are not compressible. These powders can be proposed for low end nutrition products and can be an alternative to aromas or synthetic colouring.
To find all the advice from our experts and to properly select your fruit powders, download our ebook on how to choose a botanical powder properly.
Sources
[1] Technologie alimentaire, Module sèchage, Université de Lille https://tech-alim.univ-lille.fr/sechage/co/module_Sechage.html - consulté le 03/12/2019
[2] Les procédés de séchage dans l’industrie, Agence de l’environnement et de la maîtrise de l’énergie http://www.cetiat.fr/docs/newsdocs/448/doc/guide_procede_sechage.pdf - consulté le 03/12/2019
[3] Overall Quality of Fruits and Vegetables Products Affected by the Drying Processes with the Assistance of Vacuum-Microwaves-Published online 2016 Dec 30 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5297706/ - consulted on 03/12/2019[1]