Dietary ingredients expand

Croda Healthcare, a division of UK-based speciality chemicals manufacturer Croda Oleochemicals, is to market a new range of soy nutraceuticals derived from whole soybeans. The company claims that unlike many other soy-based dietary ingredients, CrodaSoy products contain all the key phytochemicals present in soybean in their natural form.

Focus in the marketplace is given to the phytoestrogen and antioxidant benefits of isoflavones isolated from soy. Croda maintains however that more recent scientific studies indicate that isoflavones are not the only biologically-active phytochemicals in soybeans, and that the therapeutic power of soy is associated with 'whole soy' rather than individual components [Conclusions drawn by Dr Clare M. Hasler, executive director of Foods for Health Program, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1999].

Croda's​new range includes CrodaSoy Complete, a whole soy concentrate enriched with isoflavones available in a powdered form suitable for tableting and hard-shell gelatin capsules. CrodaSoy Bio, adds the company, is a source of the oligosaccharides stacchyose and raffinose, natural prebiotics, as well as soy phytochemicals and micronutrients.