AUGUST 19, 2009
Fiber has been a fad before. Kellogg became a pioneer in high-fiber packaged foods with the launch of its Bran Flakes and All-Bran cereals early in the last century. In 1985, General Mills introduced its Fiber One cereal amid another such craze.
But each time, interest faded, thanks largely to taste. Consumers complained that the foods, traditionally loaded with wheat and oat bran, were bland and grainy, according to food industry executives and scientists.
"When you talk to consumers, the No. 1 word they use is 'cardboard'—fiber products taste like cardboard," says David Clark, vice president of marketing for General Mills's Big G cereals.
Food companies say new technologies are helping to make fiber-filled foods tastier.
New grinding processes helped General Mills better shape fiber particles to reduce grittiness in the newest Fiber One cereals, says John Mendesh, vice president of research and development for the cereals division. Also, properly cooking the fiber in recipes used to require high heat and water, which tended to dull the taste of other ingredients such as honey and cinnamon. New cooking methods now allow the company's recipe makers to use less heat and water, helping to preserve more of the formula's taste.
Ingredient makers have also developed new sources for fiber powders and liquids beyond the traditional wheat and oats. They're extracting fiber from corn, seaweed and roots of herbs such as chicory or using bacteria to synthesize fibers. These new fiber types can have cleaner tastes or even enhance the flavors of fruit, chocolate and vanilla, says Cristina Munteanu, senior food scientist with ingredients-maker GTC Nutrition, a unit of Corn Products International Inc., which supplies sweeteners and starches. The latest fibers can also help retain the chewy textures of baked goods and snack bars.
"The nice thing of a lot of these [fibers] is, they're kind of easy to sneak into a lot of these products," says Joanne Slavin, a nutrition professor and fiber researcher at the University of Minnesota. Today, "you can make really good white bread and people don't know they're eating fiber."
Some food companies are bragging about the taste of their new high-fiber products. In a press release last month, Kellogg said the results of a test conducted by a third party showed that consumers thought its new Kellogg's FiberPlus snack bars tasted better than General Mills' Fiber One bars.
Like the Fiber One snacks, each Kellogg's FiberPlus bar contains 9 grams of fiber, or 35% of the recommended daily intake. Extract of chicory root, a fiber from a common herb, is the first ingredient listed on both products. Mr. Clark, of General Mills, says he hasn't seen Kellogg's data but says sales of all Fiber One products are growing rapidly.
Some dieticians caution that some products touting a high-fiber content also are high in ingredients such as sugar, fat or salt. For example, each of The Skinny Cow's low-fat fudge bars has four grams of fiber and 13 grams of sugars, equal to about three teaspoons of table sugar. Two tablespoons of Safeway's private-label brand of butter-flavored popcorn has three grams of fiber and 15% of the government's recommended daily limit of sodium. Each of Mission brand's 10-inch Carb Balance Whole Wheat Tortillas contains 84% of the recommended daily fiber intake and 23% of the recommended sodium limit.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204044204574360792553585028.html
