Dairy shelves across the country are beginning to bulge with new product offerings containing the dairy fat alternatives Simplesse, developed by The NutraSweet Company, and Dairylight, developed by Ault Foods.
Both Simplesse and Dairylight enable manufacturers to create products with the texture and flavor of fat, but fewer calories, cholesterol and no fatty acids.
Ault
This month alone, Ault announced two new products, Black Diamond 1% Processed Cheese Slices and Sealtest 1% Ultra Light Sour Cream.
(In 1991, Ault launched its first product made with Dairylight, Sealtest Parlour 1% ice cream.)
And two other companies, Salerno Dairy Products of Hamilton, and Popsicle Industries of Burlington Ont., have just come out with new products containing Simplesse.
The Salerno product is a Mozzarella-style cheese.
Popsicle has a pair of new products, launched in conjunction with Ontario convenience store chain Becker Milk: a calorie-reduced fudge bar, Fudgsicle Light 1%, and ice-cream sandwich, Revello Light Sandwich.
Last fall, with the launch of Light Choices Light Havarti Style Cheese, National Cheese of Concord, Ont., became the first Canadian company to launch a grocery product containing Simplesse.
Meanwhile, south of the border, Kraft recently launched a new sour cream product containing Simplesse. The product is not available in Canada.
Nutrasweet announced the development of Simplesse in 1990, and has since been selling the rights to various manufacturers around the world.
Bob Hodson, head of Nutrasweet’s Simplesse business in Canada, says ‘we are in advanced stages with different companies on a number of products.’
Dairy-Lo
In Canada, Ault is keeping Dairylight for its own use, but, earlier this year, it entered an agreement with Pfizer to market the processed milk protein around the world under the trade name Dairy-Lo.
Following Ault’s announcement of the deal with Pfizer, Nutrasweet said publically it is considering charging the Canadian dairy with infringement of intellectual property rights.
Pamela Kempthorne, Ault’s director of corporate communications, says Ault has yet to hear further from Nutrasweet, so it has no comment on the matter.
