Nuts and seeds, which contain polyunsaturated fats that oxidize quickly, are known to affect the shelf life of nutrition bars negatively.

Kemin offers ingredients sourced from rosemary, green tea and spearmint as well as tocopherols. Consumers want transparent labels and ingredients they recognize, said Courtney Schwartz, marketing communications manager for Kemin, in the Nov. 15 webinar.

“Those scary-sounding chemical terms such as TBHQ and EDTA and mono- and disaccharides really pop out to those consumers as something they specifically don’t understand,” Ms. Schwartz said. “TBHQ does a nice job helping to extend shelf life, but from a consumer perspective, they just really don’t understand and don’t prefer the chemical-sounding nature or understand the benefits that (TBHQ) could provide to the shelf life of the product.”

Kemin tests have found its GT-Fort brand green tea extracts work well in replacing TBHQ in canola oil and whole grain crackers. When used in nutrition bar applications, nuts and seeds may decrease shelf life because they contain polyunsaturated fats that oxidize quickly. Kemin tests found rosemary extract worked as a replacement for BHT in keeping an acceptable shelf life for walnuts.

“With each application, the efficacy of the antioxidant is kind of unique,” said Chandra Ankolekar, Ph.D., technical services manager for Kemin. “So, for example, in a fry application, the tocopherols are essential for performance. Now you can always combine them with some other plant extract. In storage oils, tocopherols are not as effective, and oil-soluble green tea extract is the best in terms of performance. So it really depends on what application you’re looking at, the intrinsic and extrinsic factors of that particular food matrix.”