Iron and Omega-3 Boosted Milk Enabled by Microencapsulation
Microencapsulation has allowed a Costa Rican dairy manufacturer to produce a milk enriched with both omega-3 fatty acids and iron, two normally incompatible compounds. From Nutra Ingredients-USA:
Austrian-based microencapsulation specialist, GAT Food Essentials, is supplying latin America’s largest dairy with an omega-3 form that is allowing the dairy to offer a difficult to achieve, non-chilled milk containing both iron and the healthy lipid.
The Costa Rican dairy, Dos Pinos, sampled the product in select outlets over the summer, and has followed that with a full-scale supermarket launch of the product, Cardilac, that is being marketed with a heart health claim.
GAT general manager, Stefan Thueringer, said Dos Pinos was impressed by the fact GAT could guarantee a four-month shelf life for Cardilac with no processing or machinery changes required to accommodate the ingredient.
The product, which employs a Norwegian fish oil encapsulated by GAT, had to overcome the difficulty of incorporating omega-3 and iron in one product, because as Thueringer told NutraIngredients-USA.com, “iron and omega-3 don’t go well together”.
The company’s encapsulation experts were able to find a way to incorporate the ingredient along with iron whilst dealing with the heat-related demands of UHT to make it central and south America’s first UHT milk with both omega-3 and boosted iron levels.