Food or edible material: processes – compositions – and products – Normally noningestible chewable material or process of... – Packaged – structurally defined – or coated
Reexamination Certificate
2000-08-25
2002-09-03
Corbin, Arthur L. (Department: 1761)
Food or edible material: processes, compositions, and products
Normally noningestible chewable material or process of...
Packaged, structurally defined, or coated
C426S660000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06444240
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to a chewing gum product or other comestible with a coating thereon, and in particular to sugarless chewing gum products with a hard coating comprising hydrogenated isomaltulose, and methods of making such products.
Chewing gums, including pellet chewing gums, are frequently enclosed with hard or soft coatings. Coatings provide an opportunity for the manufacturer to vary product characteristics such as taste, appearance and nutritional value. In recent years, efforts have been devoted to producing sugarless hard coatings for use on chewing gum. Sugarless coatings which have been investigated include coatings containing compounds such as xylitol, sorbitol, maltitol and hydrogenated isomaltulose.
Conventional coating processes for polyols use either an aqueous liquid addition of the polyol, followed by drying, or an aqueous liquid addition plus a dry charge with the polyol, followed by drying.
Sugarless xylitol coated pellet gums have become very popular and products are being manufactured in Europe and Canada. Coating with xylitol is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,105,801, issued Aug. 8, 1978, to Dogliotti; U.S. Pat. No. 4,127,677, issued Nov. 28, 1978, to Fronczowski et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 4,681,766, issued Jul. 21, 1987 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,786,511, issued Nov. 22, 1988, to Huzinec et al.; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,828,845, issued May 9, 1989, to Zamudio-Tena et al.
The most common and lowest costing polyol used in chewing gum is sorbitol. However, panning with sorbitol has been very difficult since it is hygroscopic and does not readily crystallize. A number of patents have been published that use various procedures to coat with sorbitol, including U.K. Patent No. 2,115,672; U.S. Pat. No. 4,317,838; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,753,790. A successful sorbitol hard coating was reported in U.S. Pat. No. 4,423,086, particularly when the sorbitol was at least 99% D-sorbitol. However, the quality of coating never approached the quality of typical xylitol hard coatings.
Another coating patent, U.S. Pat. No. 4,840,797, discloses the use of maltitol in a coating. Again, a high purity in the maltitol (over 95%) was required in order to obtain a good quality coating on pellet gum. Also hydrogenated isomaltulose is disclosed as a coating material or gum ingredient in PCT Patent Publications Nos. WO98/12933; WO97/45021; WO97/16074; WO97/08958; WO95/08926 and WO95/07622; U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,716,652; 5,665,406; 5,578,339; 5,571,547; 5,527,542; 5,478,593; 5,270,061; 5,248,508; 4,961,935; 4,840,797; 4,792,453 and 4,317,838; Japanese Patent Publications Nos. 95-055898 and 94-292511; and EPO Patent Publication No. 0630575.
In many of the coating processes, the liquid polyol may become tacky when it is applied to the coating bed and begins to dry. To reduce tack, the powdered polyol is applied to quickly dry the coating before it becomes too tacky. This is commonly referred to as dry charging. When a large amount of dry powder is added to a liquid mixture to help dry the coating, a soft shell results and is sometimes called soft panning. When hot liquid syrups containing pure polyols are used and dried with air, crystals are formed that are hard and crunchy. This is called hard panning. Sometimes dry charging can be used in hard panning, but is usually very limited in the amount of dry charge material, either by being used for a few applications during the process, or by using a low amount of dry charge material per application.
One of the difficulties with forming a quality coating is that it takes a long time to apply and dry the multiple coats of liquid used to build up the coating on the product. The use of a dry charge helps build up the coating quickly, thus reducing manufacturing time, but generally makes it more difficult to get a high quality coating, and particularly a hard crunchy coating, with good appearance. This has been particularly true when hydrogenated isomaltulose is used to create a coating on a chewing gum pellet. Other polyols such as xylitol can be used to coat pellets in about 2-4 hours in a side vented pan. Hydrogenated isomaltulose coating takes about 5-6 hours for the same production size of batch using the same production equipment. Therefore it would be a great improvement to be able to apply a hydrogenated isomaltulose coating on a product in a reduced amount of time, yet having a high quality appearance.
BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
A process has been discovered for coating chewing gum that results in a good quality hydrogenated isomaltulose coating in a significantly reduced amount of coating time.
In a first aspect, the invention is a method of coating comestibles comprising the steps of: a) providing cores of comestible material to be coated; b) applying a coating syrup comprising a suspension of i) an aqueous solution of hydrogenated isomaltulose enriched in alpha-D-glucopyranosido-1,6-sorbitol (GPS) compared to alpha-D-glucopyranosido-1,1-mannitol (GPM) and ii) a powder of hydrogenated isomaltulose that is not enriched in GPS compared to GPM to the cores; c) evaporating water from the applied coating syrup; and d) repeating steps b) and c) to build up a layer of coating on the cores.
In a second aspect, the invention is a method of coating comestibles comprising the steps of: a) providing cores of comestible material to be coated; b) applying a first coating syrup to the cores; c) applying a powder material over the first coating syrup; d) repeating steps b) and c) to build up a first layer of coating on the cores; e) wherein the first coating syrup is a suspension made from: i) a solution of hydrogenated isomaltulose that is enriched in containing an excess amount of alpha-D-glucopyranosido-1,6-sorbitol (GPS) compared to alpha-D-glucopyranosido-1, 1 -mannitol (GPM) and ii) a powder forming a solid suspension in the syrup, the powder comprising hydrogenated isomaltulose that is not enriched in GPS compared to GPM.
In a third aspect, the invention is a method of coating comestibles comprising the steps of: a) providing cores of comestible material to be coated; b) applying a first coating syrup to cover the cores, the syrup comprising between about 0.5% and about 10% of a binding agent and a suspension of i) an aqueous solution of hydrogenated isomaltulose that has both GPS and GPM, with a ratio of GPS to GPM of between about 99:1 and about 60:40 and ii) a powder of hydrogenated isomaltulose suspended in the solution, the powder having both GPS and GPM, with the amount of GPS not exceeding the amount of GPM; c) applying a second powdered material over the first coating syrup, the second powdered material comprising hydrogenated isomaltulose; d) repeating steps b) and c) to build up a first layer of coating on the cores; and e) applying the first coating syrup over the first layer of coating without applying the powdered material between applications of coating syrup, and drying the coating syrup to form a second coating layer on the cores.
As explained more fully below, it has been found that using a suspension syrup made from a solution of hydrogenated isomaltulose enriched in GPS and a powder of a hydrogenated isomaltulose that is not enriched has surprisingly been found to produce a better coating than a coatings made with suspensions where either both the solution and the powder are enriched or both the solution and powder are not enriched.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS OF THE INVENTION
All percentages herein are weight percentages unless otherwise specified. The term “chewing gum” also includes bubble gum and the like.
Commercially, hydrogenated isomaltulose, also called Palatinit and Isomalt, is available from Palatinit Susungsmittel GmbH, a division of Sudzucker Aktiengesellschaft of Germany. Hydrogenated isomaltulose is a racemic mixture of alpha-D-glucopyranosido-1,6-sorbitol (GPS) and alpha-D-glucopyranosido-1,1-mannitol (GPM), which is sold as ISOMALT ST. This hydrogenated isomaltulose has an essentially equal amount of GPS and GPM. PCT Patent Publication No. WO 97/08958 discloses materials which
Barkalow David G.
Richey Lindell C.
Zuehlke Julius W.
Brinks Hofer Gilson & Lione
Corbin Arthur L.
Shurtz Steven P.
Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company
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