The new tapioca starches enable brands to create process-tolerant textures, while appealing to consumer preferences for simple, familiar ingredients. Cargill said the starches are versatile and suitable for a range of applications, including dairy and dairy alternatives, convenience sauces and ready meals, meat alternatives and pet food.
Cargill’s initial offering will feature four tapioca starches, two sold under its SimPure 996 series and two under its SimPure 999 series. The Non-GMO Project Verified texturizers share a few common traits, including a neutral flavor profile, but nuances in their functional attributes are intended to give formulators new tools for specific processing conditions and product applications.
Tapioca starches in the SimPure 996 series create soft gel textures, suitable for spoonable yogurts. The high process tolerant starches bring sensory and functional attributes together, offering a creamy mouthfeel, while delivering on water-binding properties and cold-storage stability.
The SimPure 999 series encompasses the company’s non-gelling tapioca starches, which deliver creamy, indulgent textures thanks to their fat-mimetic properties. These starches are designed for stirrable yogurts, pumpable fruit preps and other applications that require a thick-but-fluid texture. They offer cold-storage stability, controlling syneresis over shelf life and are a good choice for kettle-cooked soups, sauces and ready meals.
Erin Radermacher, Cargill’s senior technical services specialist, said, “Today’s shoppers are more discerning than ever before, with a keen interest in how their food is made. That’s why we continue to expand our SimPure line, providing our customers with advanced texturizing solutions that use familiar ingredients to address a growing range of processing challenges, all backed by our global team of technical experts.
“As we evaluate new starches, we’re careful to balance process tolerance and functional performance with other critical factors like sensory and consumer acceptance. Our new high-performing tapioca starches do it beautifully. Consumers will love how they label, and formulators will love all that they can do.”