HOW TO CHOOSE A PROTEIN POWDER FOR YOUR BARS, BEVERAGES, SOUPS, SAUCES, AND MORE
Everyone wants a high-protein product. It’s the 21st-century macronutrient of choice. It’s also finicky, fickle, and expensive. More often than not, it tastes like dirt. And once it’s in your product, who knows how it will behave an hour later? Or six months later?
Protein fortification can be one of the more challenging aspects of food formulation, simply because there are so many proteins on the market, and so many ways for the protein to fail in your product. Here are a few things to consider to narrow down your choices.
Know your customer
Is your customer vegan? Whey and egg white are out. Paleo? No rice or pea. Allergen-averse community? Goodbye, almond protein.
Determining who your customer is and what they want is the quickest way to narrow the field. Then you can focus on all the other challenges that using that specific protein will bring up.
What’s your budget?
Before you commit to offering an “excellent source of” whichever protein powder floats your boat, make sure you can afford to do it. No matter the source, protein will list among the highest-cost ingredients on your COGS sheet. Whey, rice and pea will run you a pretty penny as is, but when you start looking at the weird ones—sacha inchi, watermelon seed, cricket, cranberry seed—that’s when your margins start to shrink considerably.
Though you do get what you pay for. Value-added isolates or better-tasting seeds will make your end product better. But along with high price tags they often come with high minimums. Are you sure you can sell through a whole pallet of sacha inchi protein before it turns rancid?
Processing parameters
Say you found the perfect water soluble protein isolate and it works great on the benchtop. There’s still a chance that when you take it to manufacture it will give you fits. If your product is thermally processed (retort, hot fill, aseptic) there’s a strong chance that any protein powder inside will be altered or it may fall out of suspension.
Pea protein isolate, for example, hits its isoelectric threshold at a pH of around 4.5. Which is to say, pea protein isolate won’t stay dissolved in acidic water. Instead, you’ll see floaters or gummy chunks swimming. If you plan to hot fill any sort of shelf-stable protein-fortified sauce, soup, or beverage, you need to make sure the protein you choose can withstand the process required to keep it on shelf. Whey, for one, has good low-pH tolerance.
Flavor and texture challenges
Protein tastes bad in isolation. There’s no way around it. Whether it’s the leguminous astringency of pea protein, or the fetid biliousness of cricket protein, it’s essential to get a firm understanding of the taste profile of your chosen protein before committing. Too often we’ll see a client come through the doors dead set on fortifying their product with 20 grams of hemp protein per serving before they realize that hemp protein tastes like sour cardboard.
Some taste profiles you can lean into: Pea protein is covered up nicely by its sister legume, peanuts. Whey protein is complemented by creamy, dairy notes.
It’s also worth considering how long you intend for your product to sit on shelf. High-protein energy bars, without the aid of humectants such as vegetable glycerine, honey, or glucose syrup, turn into bricks after a few months. Protein-fortified beverages often require gums and stabilizers to keep protein in suspension, and those can start to break down over time or with exposure to sun.
There are a million and one reasons why a certain protein powder won’t work for your product. Luckily, there are now a million and one different types of protein on the market. It just takes a deft hand to pick out the right one.