Easy To Digest

Food companies prefer easy-to-understand ingredients for food labels

“If you can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it.” Maybe you’ve heard this simplistic clean-eating mantra. Relatively few consumers make buying choices this way, but food marketers are simplifying ingredients nonetheless.

Food companies also want to provide their customers with better, more healthful products. Under a mandate from the FDA, they’re eliminating added trans fats by choosing alternatives to partially hydrogenated oils. In many cases, that means replacing commodity soybean oil.

Without partial hydrogenation, commodity soybean oil can’t remain the oil of choice for large-scale frying and baking. To meet that oil and shortening demand, the soybean industry has two innovative options.

High oleic soybean oil lasts longer in fryers and even keeps them cleaner than other oil options. Fry cooks like the premium oil because it has all the benefits of soybean oil without added trans fats. The oil can also be combined with fully hydrogenated soybean oil to create a zero-trans-fat option for bakery applications requiring harder fats. High oleic soybean oil is made from specialty soybean varieties that produce a better oil composition for this market.

Interesterified soybean oil uses a process similar to the way your body digests fats to combine liquid with solid soybean oils by pushing them through a column of enzymes. The process makes the oil’s consistency more uniform, which creates a product that works well as an all-purpose shortening for bakeries.

High oleic, fully hydrogenated and interesterified soybean oils meet demand without adding trans fats, but some companies and customers may still have reservations.

“Consumers won’t understand the names,” says John Jansen, an oil-industry consultant for the soy checkoff. “Food companies are on a kick for clean and simple labels, so even though we have environmentally friendly, healthful products, we need to make sure they’ll be accepted in the marketplace.”