After more than six months of concentrated effort, the technical team at Snowbird foods has given the company a New Year gift with a difference: every single house brand product recipe has been upgraded to meet 2012 government healthy eating requirements.

With more than 60 recipes involved the company opted to meet and beat the cooked sausage, sausage meat and stuffing requirements of less than 1.5g. salt or 600 milligrams of sodium per 100g of product.

As no separate and specific guidelines have been published by the government for meat balls, Snowbird chose to follow the guidelines for sausage products in this fast growing section.

“It’s not just a question of taking out the salt”, said new product development manager, Jason Drage. “We have to rebalance the recipes, make sure they taste the same as before and enjoy the same moisture content and mouth feel. We also have to ensure we haven’t affected the texture in anyway,” he added.

The project was started in the summer of 2009 when the company decided to target the more demanding 2012 guidelines rather then settle for the softer 2010 requirements.

“We are the market leader in fully cooked and frozen sausages and meat balls for the foodservice and ready meals sectors and we felt it right that we should set a lead for the rest of the industry,” said managing director, Philip Paul.

He added that Snowbird executives were now spending significant amounts of time encouraging customers buying products made to their own specification to follow the company’s example.

“Our customers regularly order around 200 bespoke lines between them and increasing numbers are asking us to help them upgrade to 2012. We are delighted they are following our example,” he added.