USA: US agri-giant Cargill introduced a new barley ingredient, with high levels of beta-glucan soluble fibre, at Health Ingredients Europe last week, as part of its platform designed to target heart health, Nutra Ingredients USA posted on November 22. Lee Knudsen, product manager at the group's health and food technologies unit, said the ingredient's high purity stood out against other available beta-glucans that usually only have around 50 per cent beta-glucans. The ingredient has also been designed to improve on the formulation challenges previously seen with high viscosity beta-glucans.

Cargill, which is aiming to build a strong portfolio of heart health products around its core plant sterols and soy protien ingredients, is currently waiting for the results of pre-clinical and clinical studies on the barley fibre to be completed this month and published next year. It is also in the process of scaling up a new plant to produce the ingredient in the US, where it is already the largest malt maker.

Foods designed to tackle heart health are set to grow by 7.6 per cent to reach sales of £145 million in the UK alone by 2007, according to Datamonitor.

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