America’s Favorite Snack Gets Healthy

From their colorful whimsical packaging and inspirational Facebook memes to their transparency of mission and desire to share healthy food options, food company LesserEvil has it down when it comes to relating to consumers.

What the Danbury, CT-based company nails is turning snacking into a moment that is fun, guilt-free and healthy—if the right choices are made. Their products, like Buddha Bowl popcorn and That’s A Good Cookie, offer just such choices.

The company’s latest snack offering, That’s A Good Cookie, offers an answer for shoppers looking for the benefits of probiotics without the hassle of pills or even required refrigeration. The 3-SKU line of single-serving cookies and 4-SKU line of 8 oz. bags pack protein, fiber, low sugar content and now probiotics, thanks to a partnership with BC30™ (Bacillus coagulans GBI-30, 6086).

Adding Probiotics to the Cookie Jar

Why add probiotics to a cookie? “We recognized the growing functional food market and felt that by adding probiotics to our nutritional cookie we offer added value to our customers. Our cookies were developed to provide health benefits as well as being a balanced snack,” says Lisa Harris, Vice President of Product Development, LesserEvil Healthy Brands. The company launched That’s A Good Cookie in February 2016 after they acquired Morning Sunshine Kitchen and launched a vegan, probiotic version of their already-popular nutritional cookies.

The Probiotic That Can Take It

While in recent decades probiotics have been reserved for nutritional supplements and refrigerated dairy foods, BC30’s unique probiotic strain, can survive extreme heat and manufacturing processes that other probiotics cannot. BC30’s unique structure safeguards the cell’s genetic material from the heat and pressure of the manufacturing process.

It easily incorporates into products, overcomes shelf-life challenges and withstands the acid and bile to which it’s exposed during digestive transit. This means that it’s easy to formulate a wide range of products with BC30 including hot beverages like tea and coffee, frozen SKUs and shelf-stable items like LesserEvil’s That’s A Good Cookie.

Friendly Formulation

With quality being so important to LesserEvil, it didn’t take long for the company to realize BC30was a good fit. “BC30 is the leader in the industry and we believe in using the best ingredients we can to provide our customers with the quality products they expect. Our customers expect the best…It was a natural fit,” Harris says.

BC30 can be added to most food processes without having to alter the manufacturing process, and has no effect on the taste or texture profile, and can easily be cleaned from the manufacturing plant, making it easy to incorporate into existing formulas such as That’s A Good Cookie.

Learn more about formulating with probiotics

That’s A Good Cookie

“BC30 worked perfectly with our formula,” Harris says. “From the first attempt, the BC30 team made it easy to identify an effective level of BC30 to include in our cookies.”

The response to LesserEvil’s probiotic That’s A Good Cookie has exceeded expectations, Harris says. “Consumers recognize the need for digestive health and we believe they identify with probiotics. With more and more consumers seeking functional products, the response to our cookies has been even better than expected. We distribute our products nationally through both natural and conventional markets. We promote the health benefits of our products through our packaging and entice the consumer to try a cookie that looks indulgent and tastes great. Now with our understanding of BC30, it would be a valuable and easy addition to any product line we may develop in the future.”

Want to include BC30 in your food or beverage product? Contact us.

America’s Favorite Snack Gets Healthy

Adding Probiotics to the Cookie Jar

The Probiotic That Can Take It

Friendly Formulation

That’s A Good Cookie

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