The Hindu : Business : Vanilco to introduce Gold Standard

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Friday, Nov 16, 2007
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Vanilco to introduce Gold Standard

K. A. Martin

A big boost to identify imitation vanillin

Colour of natural vanillin extract will be improved
‘Food product-makers widely use imitation vanilla’

Kochi: Kochi-based Vanilla India Producer Company (Vanilco), a three-year-old venture set up by 2,500 vanilla farmers in Kerala, has said it would come out with a Gold Standard for natural vanillin extract for use in food products after a company official here claimed significant success with “complex vanilla chemistry.”

Paul Jose, managing director of Vanilco and head of its research division, said here on Tuesday that the colour of natural vanillin extract and its flavour profile had considerably been improved to achieve a golden yellow that Vanilco wanted to be approved as the standard for natural vanillin extract.

“Vanilla is neither dark nor white, it is golden yellow in colour,” he said while claiming that most of the vanilla extract available in the market came in dark brown colour. Descriptions such as plain vanilla and white vanilla are “common misconceptions,” the ubiquitous nature of vanilla application having spawned these, he said.

The Vanilco experiments involved separating the dark constituent by a special process from the dark essence that was modified to a crystal clear golden aqueous solution, which looked much better with an improved flavour profile.

The improved vanilla flavour profile is under close sensory and analytical evaluation as vanilla is an extremely complex natural product having more than 300 flavour components in it, he said.

He said that most of the natural vanillin extract available in the market came in dark brown colour. Vanilco’s own natural vanillin extract has dark yellow colour. But this dark colour has nothing to do with the total flavour profile of natural vanilla, he said.

The Vanilco official attributed the dark colour to the 90-day intense curing period for vanilla beans during which the outer cells of the beans might be charred.

Mr. Paul Jose claimed that the development of the improved vanilla essence was a big boost to efforts by Vanilco for a nation-wide health guideline to compulsorily identify food items using imitation vanillin.

He said that food product-makers, including ice-cream-makers, widely use imitation vanilla.

The commercial production of golden yellow vanillin will take some time as it “involves many complex and time-consuming stages of separation,” he said.

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