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Food mag awards in focus: Ingredient Innovation & Health and Nutrition

The Food Magazine awards will return in 2013 and with entries closing on 24 April, now's your chance to have your product recognised by industry peers!

In this preview of the annual awards, we're looking at two categories: Ingredient Innovation as well as Health and Nurition.

All you need to do to be in the running for the Health and Nutrition title for 2013 is submit information on your company and its relevant product, detailing how the product is processed, its best features, how it's been marketed and basically, what makes it so great!

The Ingredient Innovation category also requires basic information about the product and its manufacturer, as well as details on what makes it unique in the market and what market need it is fulfilling.

In last year's Food Magazine awards, one company won both the Ingredient Innovation & Health and Nutrition categories.

CoYo Corporate took both these crowns with its CoYo Coconut Milk Yoghurt Natural product.

About the product
Henry and Sandra Gosling are the husband and wife team behind the CoYo dairy free, coconut yoghurt which has taken a known fruit with a high fat content and used it to now have nutritional benefits.

Sandra said the idea for their unique health conscious product was an accident. 

"This was a "silly idea" that came to mind at 3.00am on a Sunday morning," she explained.

"It had nothing to do with any specific reason as to change from dairy to coconut. Henry had managed a dairy factory that made yoghurt and after researching the coconut yoghurt market that morning at 3.15am he was surprised that no one other than a company in America was doing it.

"He was born in Fiji and thought he knew a lot about the coconut, in fact he knew very little."

Henry then set about researching the coconut and how it could be best utilised to create a product that was great tasting, with the right texture.

"The more he researched, he realised that it was an oil he was dealing with and obviously there may have been others that would have tried and then moved on. It was really in the end his stubbornness that drove him and he became obsessed with the whole concept of making yoghurt from coconut milk.

"After five months of daily experiments he finally cracked the right combination between coconut milk, starches, sweeteners and cultures," Sandra said.

Sandra became the taster as did her yoga class mates, who each Monday tried the next so-called successful batch. On 19 November 2009 one of the yoga ladies said, "My god this is "Heaven in a mouthful" and it was then that he knew he had made the grade.

Not only were Sandra's yoga friends enamoured with the product but the health food industry was too, however some slight alterations needed to be made to address the health and nutrition of the product.

"The response was at first guarded, considering that it was targeted to mainstream stores. Once the health-food stores heard about it they grabbed it. Feedback was important and slowly the ingredients were changed from the original recipe to provide what the public wanted. Out went the sugar and Xylitol replaced that and then completely vegan cultures were added."

The marketing for CoYo has been focussed on educating the public through in-store tastings by informed presenters. There is a lot of fat naturally in coconuts, so the marketing needed to focus on the health improvements that were made by the Goslings.

For information and entry details, click here.

The 2013 Food Magazine Awards are proudly brought to you by Platinum sponsor Heat and Control. Other sponsors include Flavour Makers, Janbak, HACCP Australia, Kerry Ingredients, Newly Weds Foods, Tronics, APPMA, Earlee Products and Kurz.

 

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