Functional ice cream with a "clean label"

Abstract

High market competitiveness as well as in creased interest in health-related products forces producers to create new products and innovative production technologies that would encourage a potential customer to buy. The idea of "clean label" enjoys growing popularity due to the strong in terest in healthy, unprocessed products and simple ingredients. Currently, products of this type are not yet very popular in the assortment of ice cream available on the Polish market. Ice cream enriched with selected nutrients are in accordance with prevailing dietary trends. An interesting proposal to increase the health value of ice cream may be the introduction of vitamins, mineral preparations and dietary fiber into their composition. The pro-health activity of dietary fiber is related to their beneficial effects on human intestinal microflora. From technological point of view, ice cream with the addition of fiber preparation was characterized by a significantly longer melting time than ice cream without fiber. Another way to enrich the ice cream is the addition of probiotics. Consumption of probiotic-containing ice cream can have a positive effect on human health mainly through immune system. In order to achieve the desired health effect as a result of consumption of probiotic ice cream, it is necessary to ensure therapeutic minimum related to ensuring the minimum number of viable cells of probiotic bacteria n ecessary to guarantee the beneficial effects of probiotic microflora on the human body (e.g. milk fermented beverages, the therapeutic minimum is 10⁶-10⁷ CFU/g).