Blue Sky Botanics have announced the launch of a new product to add to their portfolio of bioactive ingredients for the food and beverage industries. Organic Baobab Fruit Purée is a pasteurised, ready-to-use superfruit ingredient, which is high in dietary fiber and packed with vitamin C, potassium and calcium. With its sharp tangy citrus taste underpinned with a hint of grapefruit and caramel, Baobab Fruit Purée is perfect for food and beverage brands looking to add Baobab fiber, nutrients, taste, texture and mouthfeel to their products. Manufactured on Blue Sky’s new aseptic production line, the purée is pasteurised and immediately packaged to preserve the nutrients and ensure a long shelf life.
Baobab and Gut Health
As researchers learn more about the link between the gut microbiome and human health, so food and beverage formulators increasingly look to support the gut through prebiotic ingredients. Dietary fiber is key, and ingredients such as inulin, which has been shown to stimulate the growth of the beneficial probiotic bacteria, have been in great demand. There are approximately 36,000 plant species which naturally contain inulin fiber, the most abundant source being chicory root. But there is a new kid on the block that may soon be challenging inulin as the most potent prebiotic fiber source.
Baobab Fruit Powder is known as the African Superfruit due to its nutrient-dense and exceptionally high dietary fiber content. Recently published research conducted by Ghent University in Belgium has found that Baobab Fruit fiber is as powerful a prebiotic as inulin, but at half the dose. This finding is supported by multiple studies into the Hadza, a hunter-gatherer tribe in Tanzania who consume large amounts of Baobab Fruit throughout the year. These studies found that the Hadza have one of the most diverse gut microbiomes on the planet, and researchers have suggested that this is due to the high soluble fiber content in their diet.
Why a purée?
Baobab Fruit occurs naturally as a raw powder. This can be a challenge when it comes to formulation.
“The hydrophobic nature of Baobab Powder makes blending into liquid formulations on an industrial scale both challenging and time-consuming without specialist mixing equipment. Baobab Fruit Purée eliminates these challenges as the mechanical forces needed to incorporate the powder smoothly and consistently into a solution have already been applied”, says Caroline Brevitt, Managing Director of Blue Sky Botanics.
“We love the fact that Baobab Fruit comes as a 100% natural raw powder without needing to be processed or modified. But there are times when a formulation calls for a liquid ingredient and we have had many customers ask if we could supply Baobab in this format. The good news is we now have a solution”.
Uniquely high in fiber
Made from 100% pure Organic Baobab Fruit, Baobab Fruit Purée is an extremely versatile ingredient which can be used in a wide variety of product applications. It has one of the highest dietary fiber contents of any fruit purée on the market.
“Consumers and product developers are increasingly aware of dietary fiber’s multiple health benefits particularly with the gut microbiome, but most fruit purées fall short in their ability to deliver on fiber content. Our Baobab Fruit Purée contains over 11g/100g of total dietary fiber, several times more than other fruit purées”, says Daniel Jones, Head of Food and Beverage Division for Blue Sky.
Ethical and sustainable
Blue Sky’s Baobab Fruit Purée is both organic and fully traceable. It is also available as a premium FairWild-certified product, reflecting the ecological sustainability of the sourcing practices, fair trade pricing and transparent business relationships with rural fruit harvesters in southern Africa.
“Our entire fruit sourcing operation is organically certified, which means we can trace every batch of our fruit right back to the specific area it was harvested from. However, consumers are increasingly demanding proof of sustainability and ethical sourcing. That is why we decided to also become FairWild Certified”, says Gus Le Breton of Baobab Exports Ltd who supplies the raw material. Gus is also well known for his video blog The African Plant Hunter where he ventures out into remote areas to reveal the hidden secrets of Africa’s healing plants.
“For the past 10 years FairWild has been the global certification for fair trading standards in wild-harvested crops. The FairWild logo provides an absolute guarantee to both brands and their consumers that they are supporting an ethically sourced product. Our Baobab Fruit is a great example of such an ingredient. It ticks all the ethical boxes and provides a wonderful social-impact backstory as well. We are proud to be the first and only FairWild certified Baobab supply chain in Africa”.
Baobab Exports sources its raw material from Zimbabwe where Baobab trees grow in abundance throughout the entire country. These trees are sustainably wild-harvested by over 5000 registered collectors from local rural communities. The Zimbabwean harvesting season falls between May and September when the Baobab Fruit pods are in peak condition. This ensures Baobab Fruit Purée is produced using the most nutrient-dense and consistent fruits.
With its swollen, bottle-shaped trunk and root-like branches, the Baobab Tree is an icon of the African savannah that can live up to 2500 years old. Baobabs are almost unique in that their fruit occurs naturally as a dry powder – the fruit pods dehydrating and hardening on the branch throughout the dry season. It is thought that this process of dehydration naturally concentrates the nutrients in the pods, producing one of the most nutrient-dense fruits on the planet.
For More Information:
https://www.baobabexports.com/baobab-puree