Everyone loves a gummy sweet, don’t they? From bears, cola bottles, jelly babies to worms to name just a few. We all have our favourites whether it’s the chewiest, the most sour or the melt in the mouth one. The process to make them is the same and uses the same ingredients but the concentration of different components or timings at certain stages of the production process may change to encourage the variation in properties depending on which gummy sweet is being produced. The overall production requires the following ingredients: gelatin, sweeteners, flavourings and colourings which are moulded into the required shape.

But have you ever thought of how we know how to produce these sweets? Who controls the process of making these gummy sweets? Who decides the optimal approach to making these treats with the desired flavour, chewiness, sourness, melting properties and colours? Having understood the chemistry of creating the sweet to be produced, who designs the factory to keep producing the numbers of sweets consumed by everyone and also ensures that its impact on the environment is minimal?

The entire process will begin with food technologists and chemists to understand the proportions of each ingredient along with the required temperatures to achieve the texture, taste and appearance of the sweets in question.

The ‘gumminess’ we look for is achieved from the gelatin, so the more gelatin added to the initial solution, the chewier the sweet is. For those who prefer a jelly sweet which melts in the mouth, less gelatin is included but it is also interesting to note that gelatin is also thermo-reversible which means that as it heats, it melts.

Gelatin is flavourless so sugars and flavourings need to be added. The flavourings can be naturally derived from fruits and vegetables or artificially made. The sugars contribute most of the taste and a variety of sugars need to be included to ensure that the desired properties are achieved. Corn syrup is used for its taste but also to maintain moisture levels. If moisture levels fall too low as the sweets are produced, the solution would crystallise resulting in a gummy sweet with a slightly ‘sandy’ texture, albeit sweet sand of course. Sorbitol and fructose are added for flavour but also help to reduce microbial growth also known as mould. Surely one of the most noteworthy properties of gummy sweets is how long they remain edible and that is due to the sugars selected in their production.

Having confirmed the ‘recipe’ to producing a gummy sweet which people will enjoy and want to buy, the next step is to pass this information along to chemical and mechanical engineers who will design the system in the most efficient and environmentally unobtrusive way possible. The term ‘efficient’ applies to a number of parameters: energy, time and economics. All three of these parameters are interlinked. A system designed to operate with less energy will cost less to run and at first glance should be less impactful on the environment. However, if not enough energy is used at key stages, the process may take so long to complete that more heat and processing is required for a longer time and may even lead to an unfinished gummy sweet!

Timing is also important, there is already a predefined set of properties for the sweets. The production system needs to operate quickly enough to recoup the investment needed to kick off the system but not so fast that the quality of the final product is compromised. This would require a study by teams of engineers who would be calculating the temperatures, pHs and methods of manufacture at each stage to achieve the final properties that people look for in their sweets.

Whilst all of the above is happening, bear in mind that the same approach is being carried out for the packaging! A marketing team will have determined the logos, colors and types of containers, bags, boxes etc. that everyone would prefer to buy their sweets in. Chemists and engineers will be needed to understand the chemistry required to achieve the packaging properties and engineers will be required to produce the volume of packaging needed while respecting the energy, time and economic parameters.

Without scientists and engineers’ involvement in the food industry, food standards and management of energy consumption would be much trickier to manage