The Good Pulse Co.
The Good Pulse Co. aims to be a business-to-business company that provides a range of pulse-based ingredients (flours) for use in food products. Currently, as a prototype to demonstrate applications for their split-pea flour, they are developing a vegan cheese. The formulation uses coconut oil as the fat source, but they are keen to reduce this, in order to reduce the amount of saturated fat in the product.
The Food Innovation Centre helped us rapidly develop possible avenues in assessing proof of concept to reduce saturated fat in our product. The team researched, identified and sourced ingredient solutions to test via experimental trials. Excellent communication enabled efficient execution of the project and maximised collaborative output. We received concise actionable results, unlocking a lower saturated fat cheese product design. In fact, the great success of this project has energised us to undertake a second project with the FIC.
Project brief
The response
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Consultancy, in the form of a literature review, to cover, the major aspects of the formulation, interaction between ingredients and possible ways to go about reducing the coconut oil content in the formulation.
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Based on the above review, we trialled different ingredients/modifications to the process in the lab to reduce the saturated fat content.
- A rapid sensory session was conducted for each of the 11 prototypes with the company to profile each product.
- Syneresis and saturated fat content was decreased and other areas needing improvement were highlighted.
Benefit to the business
The business is currently in the NPD stage. From the NPD trails, valuable information was obtained on different strategies that could be employed to reduce saturated fat in the product. In addition to connecting them to and obtaining samples from different ingredient suppliers, we wer able to establish a range of potential prototypes that have different uses in the cheese category.