The Food Technology Conference
Food — from artisan to high-tech — was on display at the Institute of Food Technologists’ conference at the South Towne Expo Center in Sandy last week. An exhibit hall had rows of booths showcasing Utah food products, as well as national companies that make ingredients and flavorings for commercial food products like candies, baked goods, ice cream and so on.
My column in this Wednesday’s Standard-Examiner will discuss some of the foods I saw and tasted. There were gourmet caramels, made by a local company, Julie Ann Caramels.
I saw colorful gingerbread cookies from The Gingerbread Cottage in Draper. They were decorated for baby showers, weddings, or just to celebrate springtime.
I tasted a wonderful sheep’s milk blue cheese made by 
Joel and Rachel Wilcox of the Oolite Cheese Company, based in Manti. They age their farmstead cheeses in the Oolite limestone found around the Manti area (the same stone used in the Manti LDS Temple). Rachel, also a candymaker, served small samples of the cheese and caramel to be tasted together. It was an intense flavor combination of sweet and savory, with a strong hit of deep pungent notes from the blue cheese. (I’ve noticed similar flavors from pairing a strong cheese with a little honey.)
I found True Lemon and True Lime flavorings, where both juice and zest are cold-pressed and crystalized for a brighter citrus flavor.
When I saw the sign “Weber flavorings,” I thought it was a local 
business. Actually, Illinois-based company has been making flavorings for over 100 years.
There were protein gels and powders that can be used in making nutritional supplements, and Omega-3 fats extracted from wild-caught salmon and sold in capsule form.
A California company had fresh-frozen herbs and vegetables, so restaurants or manufacturers have ready-to-use cilantro or basil, minced garlic or diced leek with no peeling or chopping.
I attended two seminars.
Social media guru Janet 
Thaeler of South Ogden did a presentation on how to use the five most popular social media platforms.
Although it was geared to food businesses, the concise principles could be applied to any business. And yes, that’s a cat in the slide show picture; she used a “cat” theme to keep it interesting.
I also learned about the challenges of “inclusions” from Mark Jarrard, a research and development manager for flavorings company, the Kerry Group. These are ingredients added to a basic product — nuts, flavorings, chocolate chips, etc.
In the exhibit hall, the Kerry Group had a great display 
of many of these products.
Commercially made candies, baked goods, ice creams and other products might sit on a shelf or in the freezer case for days or even months before they are bought and eaten. During that waiting time, inclusions can ruin the product. Water-soluble colored sprinkles will bleed their color when added to ice cream.
Cookie dough has to be specially formulated for use in ice cream, because regular dough gets rock-hard when frozen and turns gritty when it thaws, said Jarrard.
“Nuts often have a coating when they’re added to ice cream, so they don’t become squishy,” said Jarrard.
Another problem with nuts; the oil in them eventually go rancid. Roasted nuts go rancid more quickly, so the shelf life of your product is shorter.
Also, If you’ve put nuts in your chocolate candies, the nut oils can migrate into the chocolate, causing it to develop weird light spots called “bloom.” The remedy is to coat it with “some type of barrier to retard the oil migration,” said Jarrard.
The moisture in ice cream can be a good thing, in the case of ice cream sandwiches. The ice cream softens the hard, crunchy cookie layers, which actually improves its texture, Jarrard pointed out.
More people prefer “natural” colors and flavors today, said Jarrard, and these tend to fade or bleed faster. Hence, they should be kept away from light and heat so they will keep longer.
Most of us have no idea of all this stuff; we just expect that food will taste the way it “should.” But now you know.