Why making added-fibre products is harder than it looks
This article has also been published on Food Navigator Europe – read more here.
By Dr. René Floris (Chief Innovation Officer), Dr. Els de Hoog (Principal Scientist
Taste & Texture) and Dr. Fred van de Velde (Chief Scientific Officer).
Adding fibre to established food products could help close the “fibre gap” and unlock new opportunities in targeted health nutrition. But if you don’t understand the fibre and how it interacts with other food components at the molecular level, you risk creating a product that is unpalatable – or even unmanufacturable.
Fibre intake across many parts of the world is far below public health guidelines. In a previous blog, we talked about how fermentation waste could become a valuable fibre source for the food industry and eventually lead to new products that promise targeted health benefits. But wherever it comes from, adding fibre to popular food products could help consumers close their own personal fibre gaps without big changes to their diet – with huge potential for public health.
“The success of high-protein products shows there is demand for this kind of nutritional upgrade,” says Dr. Els de Hoog, Principal Scientist Taste & Texture at NIZO.
“Protein has moved from a secondary consideration to a headline feature that drives sales. It looks likely that fibre will follow a similar trajectory. A first generation of ‘added-fibre’ products will be followed by products that promise a certain number of grams of fibre and, later, by products with specific fibres to promote specific health benefits.”
But as with protein, you can’t just add extra fibre and expect everything else to stay the same.
A key difficulty lies in the diversity of fibre itself. Fibres vary hugely in their functional characteristics. Some dissolve easily; others remain as particles. Some create structure and thickness; others don’t. And some hydrate quickly, while others continue to absorb water long after processing.
These differences have direct implications for formulation. A fibre that works in a beverage may completely fail in a dairy or bakery application. Liquid products need soluble, low-viscosity fibres, while structured products require carefully controlled thickening.
These effects can be managed at today’s fibre levels. But they can quickly become problematic as levels increase.
For example, fibres that bind water effectively are already used as thickeners and stabilisers. But indiscriminately adding more of these fibres could lead to excessive viscosity and a formulation that is too thick to pump or mix. The formulation becomes impossible to process, and your product becomes unmanufacturable.
“Problems don’t always show up immediately” Els warns. “If you use a fibre with a slow hydration rate, it can keep absorbing water well into the products shelf life. Then a product that is perfect leaving the factory could be unstable in normal storage – either becoming too thick to use or even undergoing phase separation.”
Stability isn’t the only challenge. Taste, too, can be affected – both directly and indirectly.
“Inulin is a popular candidate for adding fibre but has a naturally sweet taste. So, you have to think whether that sweetness fits your product or else how to mask it. For other fibres, the impact is less obvious. Our research elsewhere has shown that texture can affect how we perceive flavour. If adding fibre changes the texture even slightly, it can change people’s perception of how the product tastes,” adds Els.
Choosing the right fibre isn’t just about nutritional and health benefits. You also need to match the fibre’s functionality to the requirements of your product.
The functional diversity of fibres stems from their molecular diversity. Fibres differ hugely in their molecular size and structure, which affects how they interact with water and other ingredients in your formulation including proteins, salts and other carbohydrates.
“Fibres can attract, repel or “ignore” protein molecules, which has a big impact on whether the product will be stable or not,” explains Fred van de Velde, NIZO’s Chief Scientific Officer. “Exactly how fibres and proteins interact is determined by molecular properties including charge, size, structure, solubility and hydration behaviour.”
These properties don’t act in isolation, meaning fibres with similar compositions can behave very differently in application.
All this means that increasing fibre isn’t just a minor formulation adjustment. It can involve a complete reformulation. And doing that efficiently requires something more systematic than traditional trial-and-error development.
Rather, the industry should consider a more knowledge-driven and predictive approach. This starts with building a molecular-level understanding of fibres, analysing how they interact with water, proteins and other components rather than just testing outcomes. The analysis must go beyond standard supplier specifications and include properties such as hydration rates and viscosity development.
In this way, it will become possible to link molecular behaviour to product performance and predict how a specific fibre will affect texture, stability and processing in each application. Manufacturers would then be able to create a short list of suitable fibres for faster, more focused product development.
The molecular behaviour of fibres hasn’t been fully studied. The industry will need to invest research resources to build up this understanding. But we aren’t starting from zero.
Basic structural and composition data for many fibres is already available. Supplier specifications and manufacturers’ benchmarking also provide basic but useful information. There is also a lot of research in other areas that is now relevant to the question of adding fibre.
“NIZO has been exploring protein-carbohydrate interactions and polysaccharide behaviour for over twenty years – long before the high-protein and high-fibre trends. At the time, we were thinking about low-fat, low-sugar or alternative-protein products. But a lot of the molecules we looked at are actually fibres. So, we have a wealth of information that is directly relevant for added fibre products,” says Fred.
Together, these disparate resources offer a firm foundation for building a molecular-level understanding of fibres. It isn’t yet enough for full predictive power. But it is a good jumping-off point for further research.
“There are already industry consortia working on this. NIZO is involved in several including one looking at the health benefits and technical functionality of specific fibre molecules and a modelling / AI-based project on predicting fibre behaviour. We also have in-house analytic capabilities to explore the properties of specific molecules. Manufacturers don’t need to develop that molecular understanding on their own,” Fred adds.
Having access to that molecular understanding of fibres will help manufacturers develop added-fibre products faster and with less risk of costly reformulation failures. It will also enable products that deliver on taste and mouthfeel.
That matters because, whether they are trying to close the fibre gap or deliver targeted health benefits, added-fibre products will only be successful if consumers enjoy them. As such, understanding fibre is both a technical enabler and a commercial advantage.
