How Queal STEADY is made.
May 17th 2019
In the past months, we’ve published a lot of ingredient related blogs on our website to explain more about what all these ingredients are used for and where they come from. Most of these natural ingredients aren't recognisable anymore when they end up in the Queal mixture. The processes that these ingredients go through have been made clear on the supply chain page. On this page, also the process of combining all these ingredients into the STEADY mixture can be found. Let’s run through them all!
The base ingredients.
The main ingredients of Queal STEADY are oat flour, whey protein (or plant-based protein retrieved from peas and rice), isomaltulose, maltodextrin, soy flour, sunflower oil, linseed oil, and a tailor-made vitamin and mineral mix.
The helper ingredients.
Next to the building blocks mentioned above, a few helper ingredients are added:
- Natural Flavouring - Each one of our flavours has a different flavouring additive to create a unique taste! All flavouring additives are from natural resources.
- Glucose Syrup - We use a tiny bit of glucose Syrup to sweeten our shakes.
- Stabiliser - Adding a Stabiliser improves taste and best-before-date. We used potassium- and sodium triphosphates as a stabilising agent. It may sound complex, but they’re just fancy salt. Xanthan gum functions as a stabiliser too.
- Emulsifier (sunflower lecithin) -Xanthan Gum is a common emulsifier, it’s used to let the oil merge with the powder. Besides this, xanthan gum is also a stabiliser (to increase the shelf life), and a thickening agent (to improve the texture).
- Raising Agent - We use sodium carbonate as the raising agent of STEADY.
- Anti-caking agent - Silicon Dioxide are tiny particles that break the surface tension to reduce clumping in STEADY.
- Antioxidant -The antioxidant present in Queal STEADY is rosemary extract. We use this to maintain the quality of the powder by reducing oxygen levels in closed pouches.
- Sweetener - Sucralose is 600x sweeter than sugar. We use a tiny bit of the sweetener ‘sucralose’ to increase the sweetness.
The whole process.
The Queal STEADY ingredients are mixed in The Netherlands. The heroes who work here ensure that all parts are brought together in the right proportions.
When the production of a certain flavour and diet type starts, the following steps are taken:
First, all ingredients will be checked again according to HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points) guidelines to make sure that there are no health risks in the preparation and treatment processes. All ingredients are stored in a climate controlled environment before they get mixed all together.
When all combined, the STEADY powder needs to be sieved.
The next step is adding vegetable oils to the mixture. Both sunflower and linseed oil are mixed into the powder by using a micro-coating technique. Before packing the powder into big bags, a metal detector measures is there fell no pieces of machinery into the powder.
The big bags are transported to the packaging station. After putting flavour stickers on each individual bag, the packaging machine fills the individuals Queal bags and are packed in boxes to ship to the warehouse. Our powdered shakes have a minimum shelf-life of one year and, usually, a Queal pouch will lay in the warehouse for a maximum of one month.
Willing to learn more about the production of your Queal products? Then visit our brand new Transparency Hub!
Go to the Transparency Hub.
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