Patent Pick: Mimicking High-fat Taste and Texture

Patent Picks are chosen by the editors from publicly available sources. Today's invention is a method to make low-fat or nonfat snack foods with a taste and texture like conventional high-fat products.

Methods of making snack food products
European Patent Application EP2946675
Publication date: Nov. 25, 2015
Assignee: JimmyAsh LLC

Disclosed in this patent are methods for making low-fat or fat-free snack food products with the same taste and texture as the original full-fat products. Low-fat foods are subjected to enzyme and/or cation treatment and/or specific cooking and/or drying techniques to provide snack food products having the texture, flavor and other characteristics of conventional full-fat products.

Surprisingly, these methods retain the desired high-quality flavor, texture, appearance and consumer acceptability of high-fat snacks while eliminating, minimizing and/or controlling the amount of contact with fats, such as oils or oil substitutes.

Further, in contrast with known conventional frying methods, the food may be infused with a predetermined amount of fat in a completely controlled environment during its production. According to the inventors, this entirely eliminates the need for utilizing hot oils or oil substitutes while maintaining, filtering out and, in most cases, disposing of the fats used in the related production process