2012

Food products displaying nutritional and health claims are part of a market undergoing regulatory restructuring. With the recent adoption by the European Commission of a list of 222 health claims, food producers have a six-month period to adapt their practices to the new requirements. In response to this situation, Roquette – a supplier of nutritional and health solutions - offers multidisciplinary support founded on more than 75 years of experience.

In addition to nutritional and health ingredients, Roquette today has the technical, regulatory and nutritional expertise to provide such client support. "All of our polyols and plant proteins are concerned by this regulation. They are directly linked to a number of health claims adopted today. Oral health*, glycaemic response*, maintaining and growing muscle mass*, maintaining bones* – there are a large number of authorised claims  strengthening "Nutrition-Health", one of our strategic areas of development. We are very ready to support our customers in this field. In our addition to our ingredients, we offer different complementary areas of expertise that set us apart," explains Didier VIDEAU - Market Development Director - Roquette Nutrition BU.

For Roquette, application support is essential to supporting food producers in their development and reformulation projects. "The optimal use of our ingredients, the application assessment of new ingredients, the development of new applications, as well as the creation of prototypes and their translation onto an industrial scale, are all part of our daily life. This enables us to better understand the constraints experienced by our customers and to help them more effectively in their projects," notes Bernard BOURSIER - Food Applications Laboratories Manager - Roquette. 

In addition, Roquette offers analytical expertise.  "The characterisation of ingredients as such, or in food matrices at the physicochemical, microscopic, rheological, sensory and nutritional levels, is also very useful for our customers. We can save them time through pilot and analytical equipment being located on the same site, or help them understand observed phenomena," adds Nicolas DESCAMPS - Functional Properties Analysis Department Manager - Roquette R&D.

Roquette also offers scientific support for nutrition issues, in this way sharing its ingredients expertise, providing nutritional information, and advising on the development of clinical study protocols.  "We work on the topics related to oral health, as well as to obesity (glycaemic response, weight management, intestinal health). We have developed special expertise in our ingredient families of carbohydrates, fibre, and, more recently, proteins. We conduct in-vitro, pre-clinical and clinical studies, along with toxicological ones, in order to correctly characterise our ingredients (e.g. in terms of % product digestibility), and to assess their nutritional properties (e.g. assessment of the glycaemic response) and to identify any health benefits," explains Catherine LEFRANC-MILLOT - Scientific Communication Manager for Nutrition – Roquette R&D.

Regulatory support is also part of the Roquette multidisciplinary approach. Nadine JOSIEN, Expert in Food Regulations – Roquette R&D, notes that "We are highly involved in interpreting European regulations in order to move forward with our customers in the field of nutritional and health claims. We have also participated in creating health claim lists (13.1) with the whole of the European food industry and we have ensured that the ingredients families to which our products belong are correctly referenced."