While consumers perceive clean- label products to be healthier, they are not about to sacrifice taste for health. Great flavor remains the ultimate priority. Therefore, to ensure success, food and beverage companies must provide consumers with clean-labeled nutritious items that deliver a distinctive and delicious experience. That’s where natural extracts and essences can bring a significant advantage to product development.

Natural Appeal

Extracts and essences are water-based ingredients that retain, in a concentrated form, the aroma fraction and other properties of the specific herb, spice, fruit, or vegetable it is directly obtained from. Containing no solvents or other added components, they are all-natural and can easily be incorporated into a comprehensive range of food and beverage applications.

One example of the value of these natural essences and extracts is in batch-brewed teas. A volatile botanical, tea loses some of its aroma and freshness during the manufacturing process. With essences, manufacturers can return what was lost while brewing, restoring the authentic taste of a freshly brewed cup of loose-leaf tea.

Unlike typical flavors, essences are simply the named product itself; they do not require a change in label when added to the formulation.

“Consumers are increasingly demanding products with a shorter and more recognizable deck of ingredients,” explains Kevin Goodner, PhD, product manager for essences and extracts at Synergy Flavors Inc. “Essences are the perfect answer. They allow manufacturers to develop tasty products with very simple ingredient lists”

Goodner adds that variations (e.g. organic, Fair Trade, etc.) of conventional extracts and essences can be easily produced, only by sourcing the named product with these specifications.

Superior Stand-outs

Tea is second only to water as the most globally consumed beverage and, according to Mintel, is expected to grow a further 16.8% by 2019.

Synergy Pure extracts and essences hold great potential for the development of new products introduced with the promise of differentiating from existing offerings. “One of the most distinctive features of this range is the outstanding freshness it carries,” adds Nina Hughes-Likins, senior marketing manager for Synergy.

Getting Fresh

Consumers perceive freshness as healthier, and many companies are striving to deliver ‘freshness’ in their finish products. Synergy Flavors is uniquely equipped to support these endeavors. Focused on accurate capture of Nature’s true flavors, the company’s proprietary technology for its Synergy Pure line is designed specifically to boost essences and extracts’ natural appeal, and to capture the ‘freshly-brewed’ or ‘freshly-picked’ nature of a broad portfolio of botanical, herbal, vegetable, tea, coffee, and pure vanillas, while effectively maximizing the natural flavor impressions of horticultural products.

Says Goodner, “We strive to stay true to the product’s authentic aroma, as per our baseline. Nature created it. We captured it.”

Synergy Flavors’ accelerated, but gentle single-pass extraction process allows the company to uniquely minimize the degradation of flavor and nutrients that occurs in typical distillation processes, while delivering fresh tastes that replicate outstanding flavors close to nature.

Synergy Pure high quality, natural essences and extracts are suitable for an array of food and beverage applications, including tea, coffee, frozen blended drinks, juices, alcohol beverages, dips, sauces and more, offering an unparalleled top note of fresh flavor to a processor’s latest creations.

Synergy Flavors Inc. is a leading international supplier of flavors, extracts and essences for the global food and beverage industry. With more than 100 years of flavoring expertise, Synergy combines a long heritage of flavor development with proprietary extraction technology.

Originally appeared in the July, 2016 issue of Prepared Foods as The Essence of Flavor.