Hie all.I am currently developing a carb free sauce range,with a long shelf life.iDont know where to start.Will some one give me a hint on what to do do when one is doing a product development,how do i know how much of what i should add,e.g steviol,xylitol,and xanthan gum.Will you please advise me on where to go or what to do.I also need the nutritional information of my product.Where do I go.Thank you so much.
Hi Memory,
BrummyJim supplied you with great advice on how to start your project. Sometimes suppliers of ingredients will help you with your product development too. For example, your xanthan gum supplier may have some advice as to how much gum you should typically add to a sauce in the same category as yours. They also may help provide some pointers if you get stumped on why an ingredient isn't performing the way you think it should and can provide you with an alternative ingredient that will respond the way you want. You'll definitely have to spend time researching (which it sounds like you're already doing), and keeping very detailed notes about your process as you go along.
I don't know if there are specific regulations as to required concentration limits of ingredients in foods for your country, so that may be something you need to check on by looking at your regulatory laws. Those can become very important in the development process.
Also, always keep an eye on the stability of your end product. You should be able to test shelf life by sending samples to your local lab to test for things like ph, microbial content, or water activity. Depending on what you are looking for, you may have to formulate (or reformulate) based on those characteristics.
Lastly, the suppliers of all of your ingredients should be able to provide you with nutritional information for each ingredient they provide to you. You can then calculate nutritional values for your product based on formula % of each ingredient. Alternatively, there are a lot of nutritional labs that will create nutritional panels for you based on the samples they receive. This method is not cheap, but can be used if you are unfamiliar with nutritional information or do not have the time to compile and calculate.
QAGB
