*Photo Credit Almond Board of California*
More people today are snacking through their mealtimes rather than sitting down to three square meals per day, and this style of consumption has fueled the growth of snack products that span the spectrum of dayparts and snacking occasions. Healthful ingredients like almonds within innovative, tasty products can check multiple boxes for consumers seeking “free-from” labeling, clean nutrition and smart indulgence throughout the day. New snacking formats offer multiple ways for food manufacturers to deliver products aligned to popular food trends such as Whole30®, keto/high-fat, low-carbohydrate, vegan and plant-based diets. Almonds contain no added sugar, deliver a clean ingredient label, and with multiple forms, they can be used to create a wide variety of innovative snacking products. Those products can be made difficult for competitors to match when different almond formats are combined under the “almonds” umbrella on a nutritional label. And of course, almonds’ universal flavor plays well with the other ingredients commonly found in the R&D toolbox. With almonds as the core base ingredient, developers can tap into emerging trends like savory bars that may have cheese, onion, garlic, and spices like cumin, oregano, rosemary, and thyme. And each almond form can help achieve a uniquely textured product; whether working with blanched flour, roasted butter or whole natural almonds. This article will explore emerging and established almond forms, storage and shelf life, and opportunities for healthy nutrition with almonds.
To read the whole article, grab the PDF here (Almond Board California)
by Rachel Zemser November 2020
Formulating with Almonds Key Development Considerations for R_D by Rachel Zemser
