Dispatches from Health Ingredients Europe
Dow launches ingredient for reduced fat absorption
Satisfit is an emulsifier derived from plant-based cellulose which the company says has been shown to reduce weight gain and fatty liver deposits in very high fat diets fed to hamsters.
It has been developed by the Dow Chemical Company in collaboration with the Agricultural Research Service of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the company says it is now looking for research development partners to take Satisfit into clinical trials on people.
Dow Wolff’s global food marketing manager Stephanie Lynch told BakeryandSnacks.com: “This is not about preventing weight gain, but reducing it. Of course, if you eat too much over a period of time, you will still gain weight, but Satisfit pulls fat through the body, reducing the amount that gets absorbed. Everybody is talking about satiety but this really addresses reducing weight gain.”
Applications
Satisfit is a soluble, non-fermentable powder which can be mixed with seasonings, citric acid or bakery fats in order to introduce it into a product. The company says it may also extend the shelf-life of foods.
Potential applications include biscuits, snack bars, ready meals and beverages.
Lynch said: “The challenge has been in making it easy to formulate and we wanted to achieve that before introducing it…Mixing it with baking fats would be an excellent way to introduce it into bakery products.”
Fast food trials
The Satisfit trials conducted to date have focussed on hamsters fed a diet of hamburgers, fries and pound cake and the researchers claim that when Satisfit was incorporated, the animals gained seven per cent less weight than those on a control diet.
The results have not yet been published in a journal and the methodology and data have not been seen by BakeryandSnacks.com. Ongoing research – entitled Processing and Biotechnological Improvement of Foods to Prevent Obesity Related and Other Degenerative Diseases – is headed by Wally Yokoyama, research chemist at the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service. It is due to be completed in June 2009.
“Satisfit is available for formulation but we are still waiting for clinical trials to validate its benefits,” said Lynch. “We don’t yet know whether it has a delayed effect, for example. If someone eats a cereal bar [containing Satisfit] in the morning, we don’t know whether that will reduce the absorption of fat consumed at lunch. We need to carry out further tests to look at that, but the USDA is helping to validate it through animal research.”
