Apple gaining functional ingredient makeover

Recognising that the trend toward healthy eating does not always translate into fresh fruit sales, many types of which have been falling in many markets globally, Coressence has decided to add value to a commodity item with a suite of apple-derived ingredients called Evesse. Flavanols ​​The company is marketing the ingredients on their flavanol-rich potential at foods, drinks and supplements and says its apple varieties have 250,000mg of flavanols per kg, more than green tea and cocoa. "Most plant apple breeding has been driven by needs such as long life, transportation, white juicy flesh, sweetness - and it has led apples away from many of the characteristics that confer the optimum health benefits,"​ Coressence chief executive, Richard Wood told New Nutrition Business​ magazine. Like many superfruits, in whole form, the specially bred apples are very bitter due to the high antioxidant levels and therefore close to inedible. Their value comes as ingredients although Wood said the company was looking into the potential of developing edible red-flesh varieties. Marketing ​​The company is keen to avoid links with antioxidants, preferring flavanol-based marketing language and the only claim it makes about the ingredient is: "Evesse helps maintain a healthy circulation".​ "We took the decision to highlight the key benefits of flavanols in apples and not to refer to antioxidants, which is a concept that is rapidly becoming discredited,"​ Richard Wood, chief executive of Coressence, told New Nutrition Business​. He added: "You would need about 370 modern apples to get the same flavanol content as one of these varieties." ​ ​High flavanol content also extends the ingredient's shelf-life. The company had also commissioned clinical trials. "We have seen in studies a 5 per cent-8 per cent improvement in blood flow in the system within half an hour to an hour of consumption and it can take higher levels of lactic acid and CO2​ away from the skin,"​ Wood said. Ingredient development ​ In developing its suite of ingredients, Coressence worked with specialist researchers such as the UK's Institute for Food Research (IFR) and the Queens Medical Centre, which has done considerable work on flavanols' cardiovascular health benefits. Sport benefits have also been alluded to. "If you are a peak athlete at the limit of fitness you can't get enough of a benefit but for the majority of people this is an excellent way to get improved sports performance. The benefits also apply to animals - such as racehorses, but the biggest market would undoubtedly be supplements."​ Coressence's ingredients have found their way into juice extracts, freeze-dried whole fruit freeze and a patented extraction of flavanols for use in supplements, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. Its range includes a juice, granules, a food colour, fructose and a supplements and pharmaceutical grade powder. Woods said the ingredients were also produced in an environmentally-friendly way with "little or no inputs"​ because of naturally-occurring high disease resistance.