Food or edible material: processes – compositions – and products – Normally noningestible chewable material or process of... – Packaged – structurally defined – or coated
Reexamination Certificate
1999-12-29
2001-10-16
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
Reexamination Certificate
active
06303159
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 or other polyols, 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 in chewing gum. Sugarless coatings which have been investigated include coatings containing compounds such as xylitol, sorbitol, mannitol and hydrogenated starch hydrolysates.
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 in PCT Patent Publication No. W097/08958 and U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,478,593; 5,270,061; 5,248,508; 4,792,453; and 4,317,838.
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 mostly 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 and used for a few applications during the process.
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 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 good quality coating in a significantly reduced amount of coating time.
The invention is a method of coating comestibles such as chewing gum 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; and e) applying a second coating syrup over the first layer of coating and drying the second coating syrup to form a second layer of coating on the cores, the second coating syrup comprising a bulk sweetener in an amount such that the second coating syrup is saturated and part of the bulk sweetener is in the form of a solids suspension in the second coating syrup.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION
All percentages herein are weight percentages unless otherwise specified. The term “chewing gum” also includes bubble gum and the like.
While a number of bulk sweeteners are believed to be usable in practicing the present invention, a preferred bulk sweetener is hydrogenated isomaltulose. Commercially, hydrogenated isomaltulose, also called 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-glucopyransido-1,6-mannitol (GPM). Patent publications disclose other forms of similar hydrogenated isomaltulose, such as PCT Patent Publications Nos. WO 97/08958 and WO 98/12933.
In the present invention, pellet or ball gum is prepared as conventional chewing gum, but formed into pellets that are pillow shaped or into balls. The pellets/balls can then be coated or panned to make coated pellet gum. The weight of the coating may be about 20% to about 50% of the weight of the finished gum product.
Conventional panning procedures generally coat with sucrose, but recent advances in panning have allowed the use of other carbohydrate materials to be used in the place of sucrose. Some of these components include, but are not limited to, dextrose, maltose, xylitol, hydrogenated isomaltulose and other new polyols or a combination thereof. These materials may be blended with panning modifiers including, but not limited to, gum arabic, maltodextrins, corn syrup, gelatin, cellulose type materials like carboxymethyl cellulose or hydroxymethyl cellulose, starch and modified starches, vegetable gums like alginates, locust bean gum, guar gum and gum tragacanth, insoluble carbonates like calcium carbonate or magnesium carbonate, and talc. Antitack agents may also be added as panning modifiers, which allow the use of a variety of carbohydrates and sugar alcohols to be used in the development of new panned or coated gum products.
Chewing gum products of the present invention may be made with a variety of chewing gum pellet compositions. In general, a chewing gum composition typically contains a chewable gum base portion which is essentially free of water and is water-insoluble, a water-soluble bulk portion and flavors which are typically water insoluble. The water-soluble portion dissipates with a portion of the flavor over a period of time during chewing. The gum base portion is retained in the mouth throughout the chew.
The insoluble gum base generally comprises elastomers, elastomer solvents, plasticizers, waxes, emulsifiers and inorganic fillers. Plastic polymers, such as polyvinyl acetate, which behave somewhat as plasticizers, are also often included. Other plastic polymers that may be used include polyvinyl laureate, polyvinyl alcohol and polyvinyl pyrrolidone.
Elastomers may include polyisobutylene, butyl rubber, (isobutylene-isoprene copolymer) and styrene butadiene rubber, as well as natural latexes such as chicle. Elastomer solvents are often resins such as terpene resins. Plasticizers, sometimes called softeners, are
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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