In the early days if the breakfast cereal industry, pioneer manufacturers depended in consumers to given up the flavor of cereal in their bowls by topping off their flakes, granules, shreds, or oat meal with sugar or honey and more sophisticated flavor and texture additives, such as blueberries, nuts, or maple syrup.
The list was limited only by the consumer’s imagination. However, it was not long before these variations gave birth to prepackaged product extensions starting with presweetened flakes or puffs and continuing with more complicated products, such as fruit-filled shredded grain biscuits.
Fruits, such as raisins have been added to cereals for many years, but in the search for new products, other inclusions such as nuts, freeze dried yoghurt and granola (a cereal mix itself) have been added.
Also, the need to nutritionally fortify cereals soon arose, as consumers began to view cereals as a complete meal rather than part of a well-rounded breakfast including eggs, meat, and juice.
It is generally felt that the quality of cereal would be rather enhanced of the products base itself could be either totally or partially flavored.
These are applied in a various ways including sprays and coating drums. Sprays are typically applied onto a moving conveyor belt of product.
For many applications, the most efficient means of coating the product is to apply a spray inside a rotating drum where the product is gently tumbled.
Further complicating the process in some cases is the need to add water to flake products or remove it from them to maintain a proper moisture level and thus ensure good texture and freshness over an extended period of time.
Flavors are best applied as part of a sugar coating on the cereal. Brown flavors are common in cereals, and are not as susceptible to volatilization as fruit flavors.
As new generation cereal products were developed and the demand for them increased, new production technique evolved. In many cases these new generation cereals were and are using an existing product as the base (flakes, puffed grains, or shredded biscuits).
The coating layers can prevent oxidation of lipoid ingredients, colorants and flavors of food products such as nuts, confectionary, fried products and color produce.
The moisture barriers property can also be utilized to prevent moisture migration between heterogeneous food product ingredients for example between raisin and breakfast cereals.
Flavor coating cereal
