As food-makers spend millions to use more wholesome and natural ingredients, Westchester-based Ingredion has positioned itself to be a bigger supplier for them.
The company this month acquired fruit and vegetable processor Kerr Concentrates as part of its evolution into a producer of starches, sweeteners and specialty ingredients. In June 2014, it rebranded its technical, research and development functions into a global innovation network of 25 Idea Labs.
Tony DeLio, the company’s Bridgewater, N.J.-based senior VP and chief innovation officer, explains how texture is at the center of the next food frontier.
Q. What’s your innovation mandate as part of your evolution?
A. We want to be able to provide solutions to our customer at a local level but also a global level. We are primarily a company based on carbohydrates as a raw material. Carbohydrates are principally used around texture, some nutrition and some sweetness.
We’re going to be looking at other ingredients and materials that can add value from a texture standpoint or taste or nutrition or flavor. You’re getting a clue with our acquisition of Kerr Concentrates.
Q. Is texture your most strategically important innovation area?
A. Our best-defined and strongest capabilities are around texture. We also have been focusing on similar capabilities on sweetness. How you perceive sweet is also how that product works in your mouth. You have to find the right combinations to find the ideal sweetness. We’ve said that texture is really the new taste.
Q. How does that manifest for the average person?
A. We’ve trained our tasting panels to be like machines to characterize precisely what, for example, smooth means in your mouth; how it coats the roof of your mouth, how fast it takes to clear, and is it sticky at all? We have probably two-dozen terms just to characterize and define smooth. We do the same on crunch.
We’ll work with our customers to understand how consumer preferences relate to these attributes. We can dial in the perfect texture and help develop a product that fits into a range or that matches the market leader. Or, if you want to take fat out and match this fatty texture, we’ll help you build back in texture.
Q. What’s the most futuristic thing you’re doing with texture?
A. We’re doing some interesting work on understanding consumer mouth preferences around oral processing. It says when you’re in the first few years of your life you gravitate to eating foods in a certain way, which affects how you perceive texture in your mouth and your natural choices for the rest of your life.
Q. How does it work?
A. The four categories that we’ve defined are crunchers, smooshers, suckers or chewers. If you become a chewer early on, you’re going to like foods that are chewy. A cruncher will prefer to eat something different than a smoosher.
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The fascinating thing you can do with this is when you check out at a register, you can assess what people’s mouth behaviors are by the foods they’re buying and you can use that to recommend other products. We’re working with our consumer products companies on how to take this information and reach those people. It’s very different than demographics.
Q. Is Ingredion’s role in the larger innovation ecosystem more an enabler, disruptor or partner?
A. We do all three. We do work with startup companies. It’s fun to work with them. The larger companies sometimes come to us. Sometimes we see a trend in Europe or Asia and say to companies, “We see this as an opportunity and here’s why it fits with your brand.”
From a technical standpoint, I was talking to someone about fundamental research around 3D printing. We’ll look for those technology providers and make investments in those types of technologies or make our own, and when we feel like we have something, we’ll make our bets around it.
One startup I can name is AGT Food and Ingredients in Canada. They’ve developed some unique technology to make high protein-based ingredients from lentils and chickpeas. People are looking for other sources of natural, high-quality protein to add to their diets.
Q&As are edited for length and clarity.
Kate MacArthur is a freelance writer.