Healthy lifestyles drive Chr Hansen innovations

The firm plans to highlight new technologies and products to customers in the dairy, food and beverage, and meat and prepared foods industries at the forthcoming event in Chicago.

Information will be available on a brand new enzyme solution that the company claims could offer significant benefits to cheese makers around the world.

Indeed, demand for dairy cultures has been significantly boosted in recent years by the invention of what Chr Hansen calls Direct Vat Set (DVS). The term refers to highly concentrated and standardized cultures that are ready for use by dairy customers, replacing the complex process of re-inoculation that dairies were required to do up until the 1990s.

Chr Hansen believes that such ingredients could help food makers target the lucrative new consumer groups that have emerged. The largest US consumer segment, says the company, are the baby boomers, who are very willing to manage their own health needs, and invest in preventative measures. Consumers everywhere, says the company, are looking for healthy and natural foods that will help promote their general health and well-being.

For example, the company will showcase probiotics in various flavored smoothie beverages. Chr Hansen says that its probiotic cultures are clinically proven to enhance intestinal health and immunity, and are effective in yogurt, cheese, and other fermented milk products, as well as dairy and non-dairy beverages and other foods.

The smoothies will also feature natural colors and flavors. Chr. Hansen's colors are heat, light, and acid stable, allowing for a wide range of applications including beverages, confectionary, and baked goods.

In addition, the firm claims that its broad product line of natural flavors and seasonings provide taste, texture, stability, and appearance to dairy products, meats, ready-made foods, food service items, and many other foods.

Chr Hansen will also showcase pizza representing a number of the company's ingredients, including the new cheese enzyme product from the Novozymes alliance, cheese cultures, flavors, seasonings, and meat cultures that provide efficient acidification, natural coloring, and texturing. The company says that it will focus on its newly developed line of SafePro bioprotective cultures, which helps prevent the growth of Listeria and spoilage bacteria in meats, and often is more efficient than chemicals.

Chr Hansen is a global biotechnology company that provides ingredients to the food, dairy, human health and nutrition, and animal health industries. The company is a primary supplier of cultures, probiotics, enzymes, colors, flavors, seasonings, and tablet coatings and excipients, which are applied in foods and beverages, pharmaceuticals, dietary supplements and agricultural products.