Gluten-free vegan ravioli, a soy-based chocolate pudding and “the next generation of humus” were just some of the creations on display at the University of Guelph’s Innovative and Emerging Foods Competition and Showcase Thursday at Cutten Fields.
The event featured new products researched, created and marketed by University of Guelph students over seven months.
They were all there for the sampling, and judging, as 12 of the products were part of a contest for undergrad students. Six food industry experts did the judging.
It was the culmination of a project started last September, in a course involving students from food science, marketing, nutrition and engineering, working with food industry professionals to help mentor them through the process, said U o G marketing professor Juan Wang.
Wang and Lisa Duizer, a professor in the Department of Food Science, run the project.
The products were aimed at emerging food trends and markets such as vegan, vegetable proteins, convenient breakfast, beverage and more, will be presented and sampled.
“Students went to the supermarket, looked at what was there and what wasn’t there, identified what hole they wanted to fill, then they made the product,” said Duizer.
Students had to identify their product, cost it out, do research on taste and consumer reaction, develop the packaging and come up with a marketing plan.
“Some of the products were healthy, some of them are meeting the alternative food market,” Duizer said.
One of the product was a “cognitive booster drink” marketed to students called Cognisip. There was also Relax Pax, a powdered beverage mix aimed at “promoting relaxation and enhance the taste and experience of drinking water.”
Reiss Debrouwer, a fifth-year food science student, said “there was lots of trial and error’ coming up with his team’s product, Colline Blanche artisanal bliss crisp.
“Basically, the first full semester was product formulation” and fixing it up to get the final product, Debrouwer said.
“It is a real-life situation of food product development,” he said. “There’s six of us in the group and it took seven months. There’s a lot more that goes into it than what’s on this table.”
Different versions of the product - “we tried to cut the nuts and fruit in half to save costs’ - were tested at the U of G’s food sensory lab on volunteers before the final formula was arrived at.
Duzier said one of the keys to the project is that the students actually create the product, not just come up with a concept.
“It’s essential they make it,” she said.
“From a theoretical perspective you can put it on a piece of paper and it looks great. But the students all experienced that you can come up with a good idea, but then you come up with a formulation, go into the lab and make it, and it wouldn’t work,” Duizer said.
“They have a real thing that they can work on to make it better,” Wang added.
The contest winners Thursday were:
- First place: Foraged Vegan Gluten Free Ravioli
- Second place: Decadent Indulgent Chocolate Mochi Bites (a Japanese-style snack size dessert)
- Third place: Bijou Treats Ice Cream Macaron Sandwich
