SOUP TO NUTS
By Meredith Goad

Portland Press Herald
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Sweet deal!

They were up against a bagel with the cream cheese already swirled inside it, a healthier version of fish and chips for kids, and a caramel apple without the stickiness -- it had caramel flavoring injected into it.
The other students in the competition had more experience and fatter budgets.
But in the end, the food-science students from the University of Maine were triumphant. Their "Yo Bon Blueberry Bites" -- frozen blueberry yogurt covered in dark chocolate -- won first place in a prestigious product-development contest sponsored by the Institute of Food Technologists Student Association in June. There was lots of hugging and yelling.
"We beat out some of the nation's largest food-science departments," said Jason Bolton,
Now, encouraged by their success and a grant from the Maine Technology Institute that allowed them to purchase a chocolate waterfall, Bolton and a couple of partners are trying to develop the frozen novelty further.
Cathy Billings, one of the consumers who taste-tested the Yo Bons when the students were creating the product for one of their food-science classes, liked them so much she asked to be made a partner in the endeavor.
"It's that outstanding," she said.
Not only are the Yo Bon Blueberry Bites tasty, they're more healthful than a lot of frozen novelty products on the market, too. They are full of antioxidants and calcium. One serving of the bites, which amounts to two bon bons, is higher in antioxidants than a cup of blueberries.
A serving contains 188 calories, 25 percent of the daily value of calcium, 10 percent of daily fiber needs, and a little over 9 grams of fat.
Using real chocolate instead of a chocolate coating, as other products do, made a big difference in the amount of fat in the bon bons, Bolton said.
"The chocolate coatings are mostly fat, less chocolate," he said. "Most of our competitors have almost twice as much, if not more, fat than we do."
The product has the same mouth feel as higher-end ice creams, however, according to Shari Baxter, a graduate student who worked on the project. The Yo Bons, which start with Gifford's plain frozen yogurt, have a lower percentage of milk fat than premium ice creams, she said, but "we have compensated for that by using stabilizers to make a creamier mouth feel so it still feels like you're eating a very high-end product, but you aren't getting the fat associated with that."
When they were developing the product, the students tested it on 132 consumers and were astonished by the response. On a scale of 1 to 9, with 9 being the highest score, the Yo Bon Blueberry Bites averaged 8.1, "which is extremely high," Baxter said.
"In most industry product-development scenarios, if they get in the high 6's to 7's they know they have a good enough product to take to market."
The students produced 600 of the bon bons for the food-science competition. Now, even with their initial success, the students are still making the bon bons by hand, but their productivity has skyrocketed.
Before receiving the MTI grant, they were using a chocolate waterfall at Wilbur's of Maine in Freeport.
"We actually transported frozen yogurt cores on dry ice the hour and a half down to Freeport, coated them, put them back on dry ice, and transported them back up to the university," Baxter said.
Now they are able to make more than 4,000 bon bons in a couple of weekends.
There's still more market research, and other work, to be done before you'll be seeing the product in your grocer's freezer. And the partners are considering developing other product lines -- say, coffee- or cranberry-flavored bites.
"It's a learning process even still, and there's quite a long way to go, I think, before we get to the point where we totally ramp up for production," Billings said.
If they ever start making money at this, they plan to give back to the university, which has allowed them to use its equipment and the expertise of its faculty. One thing they are considering is donating some of their profits for food-science students who want to do similar projects in the future.
"One of the things we're priding ourselves on is, because of the backing from the university, we always want this to be associated with the university," Bolton said.
Until then, they are working hard and weighing all their options.
"We're pretty open to see what the future holds for us," Baxter said.
Staff Writer Meredith Goad can be contacted at 791-6332 or at:
mgoad@pressherald.com

UMaine Product Development Team

Congratulations to Andres Rodriquez, UMASS,
2006 recipient of the
International Association for Food Protection's
"Developing Scientist" Award.
More than 1,700 of the top industry, academic and government food safety professionals attended IAFP 2006 held in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, August 13 to 16.

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