I am a scientist in health and nutrition field, AMA.

[dontyellmepls]

Mods, delete if not allowed.

I am a food scientist specializing in natural food ingredients with a focus on fiber. I work for one of the largest food ingredient manufacturers in the world where i design lab scale extraction process, work with regulatory/marketing/business teams to determine scale-up feasibilities and help commercialize final products all over the world.

I can't answer specific nutrition questions, but I think I can answer fair bits about the industries, current trends, whether some stuffs are legit or total crap, and how the food markets are changing over the world.

Ask me almost anything.

Note: I m not answering political questions, but will answer how politics may affect us.

 

[BigDadd7]

Cool. There are probably more than a few threads you can jump in and contribute. Thanks.

 

[adrenalytic]

Mods, delete if not allowed.

I am a food scientist specializing in natural food ingredients with a focus on fiber. I work for one of the largest food ingredient manufacturers in the world where i design lab scale extraction process, work with regulatory/marketing/business teams to determine scale-up feasibilities and help commercialize final products all over the world.

I can't answer specific nutrition questions, but I think I can answer fair bits about the industries, current trends, whether some stuffs are legit or total crap, and how the food markets are changing over the world.

Ask me almost anything.

Note: I m not answering political questions, but will answer how politics may affect us.

why do you put high fructose corn syrup in everyfuckingthing?

Also, welcome to meso

 

[sionnach]

with a focus on fiber.

Note: I m not answering political questions, but will answer how politics may affect us.

Welcome to Meso.

 

[dontyellmepls]

why do you put high fructose corn syrup in everyfuckingthing?

We don't make high fructose corn syrup or even deal with it. If anything, we try to find natural intense sweetener (no, we don't deal with stevia, they taste nasty).

Fructose is a cousin molecule (isomer) of glucose. It has exact same number of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, but its structure is different. Glucose is hexagonal (not really, but for convenience lets call it that way) and fructose is pentagonal (againt not really but for convenience!)

From sensory perspective, fructose is 60% sweeter than glucose or sugar by mass. Theoretically, this should decrease sugar amount but we put as if we were putting regular sugar, which is why sodas in the US are so goddamn sweet.

why we put those in food is a combination of processing convenience and politics.

Processing wise, cane sugars are produces by cleaning, washing, grinding, filtering solids, decolorising with activated carbon or bentonite, and then drying. This sounds simple, doesn't it? Well, easier doesn't mean cheaper. Corn syrup is super cheap to make compared to cane sugar. It is also easier to handle in manufacturing. Corn syrup and high fructose corn syrup are made from, corn (duh). Corns have lots of starch, which contain a lot of glucose in huge chains.

Amylase, an enzyme that we have in our mouth and small intestine (though also found in bacteria and all), breaks down starch into dextrin. maltodextrin, maltose or other short chain substances that we use everyday. Then, amyloglucosidase is used to further chop them down into glucose. Then, an enzyme called 'xylose isomerase" converts glucose to fructose, wihch is how you get HFCS.

Onto a bit more political reason - the US pays a lot of subsidy to farmers to grow corn. I am not a history wiz, but apparently the practice started from great depression where oversupply of corns destroyed the farmers' livelihoods. In order to prevent that, the US pays these farmers to grow corns even if they make no money or lose money from this.

On the other hand, this means that corns will always be there and unlike sugar canes, which only has what, half million acre growth area, there are 90 millions of corns growing right now. So from the business perspective, corns are much much cheaper and more available to use. Which one is the winner as a raw material?

Corn.

 

[dontyellmepls]

Welcome to Meso.

you eat fibers....not fuck it in the anus.

 

[Buffed Shark]

Welcome to Meso, some here are funnier than others but you'll get acclimated.

Question for you, since you're an expert in nutrition/manufacturing. What do you think of protein bars, in terms of healthy claims and more importantly nutrition values that seem to be un realistic at times. I know some manufacturers can manipulate some values but to what extent and what restrictions on ingredients do they have.

Another thing is what one or 2 mindblowing fact most people dont know that you wanna share.

 

[dontyellmepls]

Tricky thing about health claims is that there are two types.
One is a health statement that provides a loose possible benefits that aren't backed by human clinical trials, but are somewhat? supported by animal or in-vitro-studies. The other is a health claim where you need to provide clinical evidences that "X does Y". If the ingredient is already well studied, then you don't need to spend tens of thousands of dollars in clinical trials because existing studies will do just fine.

Part of my job is to scout competitor ingredients and see their clinical trials. Some are impressive, some...not so much. There is a thing called "clinical significance" versus "statistical significance." A treatment may really give some difference, but whether they are really meaningful in the context is a different question.

\ nutrition values that seem to be un realistic at times. I

can you give me a specific example? The nutritional label is based on nutritional database of individual ingredients, and from there it's just addition of values into a defined serving size.

I know some manufacturers can manipulate some values but to what extent and what restrictions on ingredients do they have.

Manipulation can go only so far as making the calorie looksmaller by using a small portion size...like mayonnaise, which is about 90-100kcal per 1 tbsp. Or, truncating values to zero if it's less than 5kcal, like diet sodas. Is that a manipualtion? Yes. and the US industries do it more openly. Is that a serious issue? I personally don't think so. 5kcal or 0kcal doesn't mean much to me. Now, if a company falsely claims that their products contain high proteins when they are actually bloated values due to a flawed nitrogen analysis...then you have a big problem with FDA or USDA depending on what type of food it is.

Another thing is what one or 2 mindblowing fact most people dont know that you wanna share.

Milk industries lobbying against plant based "milk" is a funny one.

Or perhaps the fact that many of the food ingredients since early 2000s do NOT have actual GRAS status from FDA...but they have self-gras status, which means that the companies consult external food safety consultants that they are GRAS-equivalent. I am on a fence with this because FDA just doesn't have enough resources and time to do all GRAS certification, so they let industries self-regulate...and for this particular aspect of the industry, it worked so far.

Lastly, free market/competition is kinda joke these days here. Big CPG (consumer pakcaged goods) companies like hershey, general mills, coca cola or Frito have bought up so many smaller brands at this point that it's just a big boys' competition. Same goes to B2B (business to business) companies.

not as exciting as you hoped, but there ya go

 

[patriot-piper]

What are the ingredients I should keep an eye out for?

Either ones with health benefits that aren’t mainstream yet or GRAS ingredients that have no business being GRAS (potentially harmful)

 

[dinfar1337]

5kcal or 0kcal

if you actually dive even deeper into it.

both eu and usa and eu have a allowed variation of 20% of nutrition values.

so you can either end up with 4-6 calories shown as 0 for usa

or 3.2 to 4.8 calories shown as 0 in the eu.

now the whole per serving vs per 100ml/mg i wont go too much into but it essentially allows americans to lie even more than eu labels.

anyways welcome to the forum there's always room for more nerds, you'll find your place where you belong in here

 

[dontyellmepls]

What are the ingredients I should keep an eye out for?

Either ones with health benefits that aren’t mainstream yet or GRAS ingredients that have no business being GRAS (potentially harmful)

Not that you will ever run into it, but avoid Tara flour or gum. A non-essential amino acid called baikiain is found to be hepatotoxic.

 

[dontyellmepls]

if you actually dive even deeper into it.

both eu and usa and eu have a allowed variation of 20% of nutrition values.

so you can either end up with 4-6 calories shown as 0% for usa

or 3.2 to 4.8 calories shown as 0 in the eu.

now the whole per serving vs per 100ml/mg i wont go too much into but it essentially allows americans to lie even more than eu labels.

anyways welcome to the forum there's always room for more nerds, you'll find your place where you belong in here

Yup, I am not a regulatory expert so I just gave a general answer.

I went to Austria, Slovakia, Germany before. They are definitely a little more accurate than the US ones.

Also, EU has a lot stricter regulations on "novel foods" than the US. It takes years to get an approval. Right now our company is going to launch novel fiber ingredient that we only will sell in the US because EFSA evaluation is gonna take looooong time. But hey, europeans should appreciate that their governments aren't so easilybought out XD

And hi

 

[dinfar1337]

Also, EU has a lot stricter regulations on "novel foods" than the US

yeah i live in denmark so i get to be protected by insane regulations, great to know this stuff since most people dont.

but im sure you probably know all about scandinavia in your field. they're the devil never go there!

 

[dontyellmepls]

yeah i live in denmark so i get to be protected by insane regulations, great to know this stuff since most people dont.

but im sure you probably know all about scandinavia in your field. they're the devil never go there!

I hear you guys don't give food to guests. preposterous!