01.01.04
A production scaled study has demonstrated that both the product properties and production output of breakfast cereals can be improved significantly when sugar is replaced either completely or partially by Palatinit’s Isomalt. Sample cereal rings made with Isomalt as the sweetener showed a much better crunch, thus remaining crispier to the taste, over a longer period of time than sample cereal rings made entirely or in part with sugar as the sweetener. The study also revealed that cereal rings made with Isomalt were found to have a bowl life, which is the length of time cereal can be immersed in liquid such as milk without becoming soggy, significantly longer than that of cereal rings made with sugar. In addition, due to Isomalt’s low hygroscopicity, cereal rings made with Isomalt also showed a significantly improved shelf life, staying virtually unchanged after six months of storage, in contrast to sugar-based cereal rings, in which the bite force was reduced 18%. Experimental production runs showed that energy input, expressed as the Specific Mechanical Energy (SME) input, and die pressure both decreased continuously the more sugar was replaced by Isomalt in the cereal rings, which helped increase production output.