The USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) has developed a low-cost, high-quality pectin that has been specifically developed for increasingly popular low-sugar food and drink products.
According to the research team, which published its finding in the journal Food Hydrocolloids, the pectin is easy to formulate with and is scalable for commercial production, but whereas most conventional pectins on the market successfully gel when combined with high-sugar products, the ingredient is able to do this with low-sugar products.
Pectin is a soluble fibre that is naturally derived from fruits and vegetables. Most commonly, they are derived from citrus fruit peels and are produced as powders that are used as gelling agents in a wide variety of sugary foods, including jams and jellies, dessert fillings, and as stabiliser in fruit juices and dairy drinks.
The ARS says its research is in response to rising demand for pectin, with current estimates by IMARC showing that the global market is set to grow from a value of $1.2 billion in 2023 to reach $2.3 billion by 2032. The popularity of the ingredient is driven by increasing demand for packaged foods that contain clean-label and naturally derived ingredients.
Currently, there are three conventional types of pectin. High-methoxyl pectin is generally used to make high-sugar foods, low-methoxyl pectin is used to make low-sugar foods, and low-methoxyl amidated pectin is used as an additive. The challenge in developing low-sugar foods is that low-methoxyl pectin is more complex to produce and it is not stable in acidic formulations.
“For people seeking low sugar foods, most commercial pectins will not gel properly since a lot of sugar is needed for the gelling process,” said Wei Zhao, a research chemist working on the project at the US Horticultural Research Laboratory in Florida. “There are some commercial pectins that can gel in low sugar foods, but these alternatives tend to be low quality, are quite expensive to produce, and may contain undesirable residues.”
Zhao and her team, which comprised researchers from the US Horticultural Research Laboratory, the ARS Western Regional Research Center in Albany, California, and ARS Eastern Regional Research Center in Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania, found that by pre-heating fresh orange peel using a high-pressure processing (HPP) treatment, they could extract pectin from the orange peel using a standard commercial practice. The advantage is that the HPP treatment gave the pectin desirable structural properties that enable it to gel with low-sugar products, without a residue or other undesirable side effects.
“Our research findings reveal the great potential of producing low-cost, high-quality pectins with increased gelling capacity by adding a simple HPP pre-treatment of fresh source material for pectin extraction,” said Zhao.
With global sugar consumption still rising, the number of consumers who want to lower their sugar consumption points to a struggle, with research from The Kerry Health and Nutrition Institute suggesting that nearly eight in ten consumers believe that lower-sugar food and drinks are healthier. With this goal of helping consumers by providing a wider choice of low-sugar foods, the ARS research team wanted to achieve a pectin that could be added to lower-sugar products to give consumers more product choice.
While high-fat products have traditionally been the focus of healthier and lower-calorie diets, research is increasingly pointing to the fact that high-sugar diets are a significant contributing factor to rising levels of obesity and associated health risks such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
An umbrella study published by the National Library of Medicine looked at 235 studies, concluding that there were few documented benefits of a high-sugar diet, while the negative impact on health is underscored by guidelines recommending that no more than 5 to 10% of daily dietary intake should be derived from added sugars.
Currently, the average American is said to consume 32 teaspoons of sugar a day, according to ARS research. This is the equivalent to 500 calories, a figure that far exceeds recommended guidelines.
