Polydextrose – sugar reduction in practice

Sugar reduc­tion is excit­ing but com­plex work. In an arti­cle series, we will look at some ingre­di­ents that can be used to reduce sug­ar in food. How can the ingre­di­ents be used and what should be con­sid­ered? These are ques­tions we will answer! In this arti­cle, we take a clos­er look at poly­dex­trose.

What is polydextrose?

Polydextrose is a dietary fibre that doesn’t come from nature, although the raw mate­ri­als are natural.

During the 1960s, it became pop­u­lar with low-calo­rie prod­ucts and foods that were adapt­ed for peo­ple with dia­betes – but these prod­ucts were, unfor­tu­nate­ly, no taste sen­sa­tions. The mouth­feel was adverse­ly affect­ed although it was dif­fi­cult to pin­point the discomfort.

This would change. A research team at Pfizer elab­o­rat­ed with glu­cose, sor­bitol and cit­ric acid. The result was called poly­dex­trose. Glucose is the major com­po­nent of this coop­er­a­tive sup­ple­ment that has been shown to work well in sug­ar reductions.

Suddenly, the recipes could be fur­ther processed, giv­ing a whole new result. In the arti­cle Polydextrose – from seed to Eureba you can learn more about the his­to­ry of poly­dex­trose and its chem­i­cal composition.

Pure, neutral and dissolving

Polydextrose has many sim­i­lar­i­ties with reg­u­lar sug­ar: it dis­solves eas­i­ly, has a clear colour and sim­i­lar rhe­o­log­i­cal prop­er­ties regard­ing vis­cos­i­ty and shape. Therefore, it also resem­bles sug­ar in how the fin­ished prod­uct is perceived.

The taste is per­ceived as pure and neu­tral and it doesn’t mask or take over oth­er flavours. It’s suit­able for pro­bi­ot­ic or low-calo­rie foods and for foods with a low glycemic index.

Another advan­tage is that poly­dex­trose has excel­lent process sta­bil­i­ty. Polydextrose can with­stand heat and acidic envi­ron­ments with­out any prob­lems. Features that enable prod­ucts with long shelf life.

Supreme calorie reducer

Since our body can only par­tial­ly break down the fibres from poly­dex­trose, it has a clear­ly low­er calo­rie con­tent than sug­ar and fat. Polydextrose pro­vides only 25 per cent of reg­u­lar sug­ar calo­rie con­tent and only 11 per cent com­pared to fat. Therefore, you could reduce the calo­rie con­tent of a food by half using poly­dex­trose, with­out affect­ing either taste or mouth­feel.

No sweetness – full body

The right tex­ture can eas­i­ly dis­ap­pear when you sub­sti­tute sug­ar for some­thing else. With poly­dex­trose, you are able to devel­op prod­ucts that have a taste and con­sis­ten­cy com­pa­ra­ble to prod­ucts that actu­al­ly con­tain sug­ar. It’s a recur­ring fea­ture of many of the fibres includ­ed in our arti­cle series on sug­ar reduc­tion in prac­tice.

But the dif­fer­ent fibres behave in slight­ly dif­fer­ent ways and it’s impor­tant to find the right com­bi­na­tion and bal­ance to get a sat­is­fac­to­ry result and a prod­uct that you or your com­pa­ny feel pleased with.

With poly­dex­trose, you get an ingre­di­ent that can par­tial­ly or com­plete­ly replace sug­ar, fat or starch in dif­fer­ent com­po­si­tions. Polydextrose has in most cas­es no amount lim­it. But don’t use more than necessary.

A good partner

Polydextrose can be used and paired with most foods and ingre­di­ents. You can use it in var­i­ous appli­ca­tions, such as pas­tries, drinks, choco­lates, sweets, dairy prod­ucts, pow­er bars and more. It has to do with its amaz­ing sta­bil­i­ty which makes it use­ful in many dif­fer­ent foods.

What does the expert think?

What has Srdjan Solaja, food engi­neer at Bayn, to say about polydextrose?

– It’s a sol­u­ble fibre that is very easy to use. It adds no colour and has no strange taste. Because it is so sol­u­ble, you can real­ly get plen­ty of fibre in food with­out get­ting a grainy or dry tex­ture in the food, says Srdjan Solaja.

What to be aware of when working with polydextrose?

– Since poly­dex­trose is a fibre that pro­vides full­ness and body – but no sweet­ness, it’s not a good idea to replace all of the sug­ar at once using poly­dex­trose. Such food will not taste good and will not hold togeth­er in a sen­si­ble way, says Srdjan Solaja.

– The first trick is to not remove all sug­ar. Just replace a small part with poly­dex­trose, and next time you can swap out a bit more and see what hap­pens. You can also add a high-inten­si­ty sweet­en­er, for exam­ple, ste­via to enhance the sweet taste, says Srdjan Solaja, food engi­neer at Bayn.

Srdjan’s three tips

Here are Srdjan’s three tips for you who are curi­ous about polydextrose:

1. Polydextrose is incred­i­bly sta­ble dur­ing var­i­ous process­es, it can with­stand both heat and acidic envi­ron­ments, mak­ing it easy to use.
2. It is advan­ta­geous­ly com­bined with high-inten­si­ty sweeteners.
3. Perfect sol­u­bil­i­ty which makes it suit­able for a vari­ety of applications.

A helping hand

If you want help reduc­ing sug­ar in your prod­uct we can help you. Do not hes­i­tate to con­tact us.