Iowa Food Companies Will Have a Major Presence at 2011 Institute of Food Technologists Annual Meeting and Food Expo in New Orleans June 11 to 14

DES MOINES, Iowa, June 10, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- The Iowa Department of Economic Development is a major exhibitor at the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) Annual Meeting and Food Expo in New Orleans this week. Fifty-three companies with facilities in Iowa will represent the state at the food ingredients technology sector conference.

"Iowa continues to be at the forefront of food technology and advanced manufacturing for the food industry," said Debi Durham, director of the Iowa Department of Economic Development. "We plan to continue to invest in this sector while fostering new technologies and innovations that will change both the industry and food processing as we know it. Our state is home to companies on the cutting edge of developing new ingredients and technologies to meet consumer demands."

In fact, 27 of the 100 largest American food manufacturers call Iowa home. The state, with its 53,000+ employee industry, produces one-tenth of the nation's food supply, and food processors in the state generate nearly $32 billion in food products every year.

Iowa, long a hub for food manufacturing and global distribution, houses numerous companies that continue to develop new varieties, processes and technologies, as well as collaborate extensively with food processors to create better solutions and new products.  

These include the following:

• Harvest Innovations, located in Indianola, Iowa, is launching two soy-based ingredients that will build upon Harvest Innovations' 50-year history of working with grains from around the world and developing non-hexane processed products. HIsolate® is a soy-based, 65 percent protein product that functions in meat, pasta and beverage products as an isolate. It will be a cost-effective, hexane-free alternative to isolates and concentrates, which will give customers a more economical way to produce their food offerings. The second new product offering is Egg-Out®, a non-allergen egg replacement ingredient developed from soy or peas. Egg-Out® will be a fraction of the cost of egg whites, with all of the functionality and no negative taste profile.  
• Embria Health Sciences, headquartered in Ankeny, Iowa, combines science and nature to develop high-quality, research-based natural ingredients that are added to finished products.  Embria's flagship ingredient, EpiCor®, is an all-natural product that helps the body balance the immune system. Containing protein, fiber, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, antioxidants and other metabolites that deliver nutritional benefits and support immune health, clinical studies have found EpiCor's immune-balancing properties provide year-round support by helping the body boost or suppress immune response as needed.
• Ajinomoto Heartland, LLC, and its sister plant, Ajinomoto Food Ingredients, LLC manufacture a myriad of industry-leading nutritional products for animals and humans alike.  The two plants sit adjacent to each other and are part of a mammoth nutritional complex known as the Iowa Bioprocessing Center.  The two Ajinomoto companies are now using and developing sophisticated fermentation processes to create dextrose-derived products, essential amino acids for animal and human use, bio-plastics and a host of carbohydrate-derived chemicals. More than a quarter million bushels of corn each day are transformed into everything from food ingredients like soft drink sweeteners, citric acid and natural flavor enhancers, citrate products, ethanol, and even into agents used in fabric softener sheets at Ajinomoto Heartland.
• Hormel Foods recently opened a new facility in Dubuque called Progressive Processing, which is one of the first manufacturing plants to be LEED®-certified by the U.S. Green Building Council. In addition to being energy efficient, the plant was constructed using materials with more than 36 percent recycled content. The facility is implementing a new, innovative and sustainable way to cook better-tasting chunk chicken outside of the historical energy laden process of boiling chicken in water. With Progressive Processing, chicken is instead cooked in high-efficiency ovens, which constantly rotate the chicken in a spiral oven chamber and then cooled in a continuous chiller, significantly decreasing cooking and cooling processes. These new, more efficient processes reduce the amount of water, energy and lost heat that is associated with historical methods.  It also creates better-tasting, oven-cooked product for consumers.

As Iowa companies continue to forge ahead with new technologies for the industry, Iowa State University's Food Science and Human Nutrition Department (FSHN) and the Nutrition and Wellness Research Center (NWRC) prepare the next generation of the workforce by educating students to create products that will meet industry manufacturing challenges and address the growing food-related demands of today's consumer.  

"Our program at ISU prepares graduates for major issues facing the U.S. and global food industries," said Ruth MacDonald, professor and department chair of ISU's Food Science and Human Nutrition Department. "These include obesity and increasing concerns that our food have a healthy balance between tasting good and providing the essential nutrients for a healthy life."

Strong partnerships between business and education in Iowa allow food companies to develop creative solutions – such as low or calorie-free sweeteners that don't compromise taste, and natural sources of food preservatives – in the food and bioscience industries.

One example from Iowa is Dr. Suzanne Hendrich, professor at ISU's Food Science and Human Nutrition Department, whose research goal is to understand how gut microbes affect health.  Her work has shown that resistant starches have the ability to stimulate short chain fatty acid production and alter gut microbial populations, in some cases in conjunction with prevention of colon cancer development.

Her goal is to bring dietary components, microbial population models, and disease models together to develop recommendations and new food products that can help people protect their gut barrier function, maintain healthy gut microbial populations and prevent irritable bowel disease (IBD), colon cancer and diarrheal diseases in general. This work has the potential to improve human health globally, but especially in more than 1 million individuals in the U.S. who have IBD.

Iowa values the food ingredient manufacturing industry and will continue to lead the way to create healthy and enjoyable foods. Visionary leadership in the state pairs with research institutions to foster growth of the industry and make Iowa the ideal home for food processing, manufacturing and value-added food products.

Follow the latest news from the Iowa Department of Economic Development (IDED) on Twitter (@Iowabusiness) and Facebook (Facebook.com/IowaEconomicDevelopment) before and after the IFT Annual Meeting and Food Expo 2011.  Also, stop by IDED's pavilion (Booth 7231) to visit with representatives from IDED and more than 53 other Iowa food companies out of more than 900 exhibiting at the EXPO. For more information visit www.iowalifechanging.com/mediacenter.aspx.

SOURCE Iowa Department of Economic Development