Caramel

Description

Upon heating sugars, caramel (also known as caramel sugar) occurs as a product of breakdown and possesses a characteristic aroma. The colour of the product may be manipulated through the temperature used for heating.

Application

• in bon-bons and all types of sweets
• convenience sauces, pudding
• liqueurs and fortified wines

Gene technology

Caramel is obtained primarily from glucose or glucose syrup. Both of these are products of saccharification of starches. In such cases, gene technology may have been applied to the raw materials as well as to the enzymes that are used in their processing.

• Raw material starch from maize, potatoes or wheat
  Maize or maize starch may contain a specific portion of genetically modified maize, particularly in the case of maize that has been imported from the USA or Argentina. This probability will increase in the case that the cultivation of GM maize in the EU ios heightened.
  In the future also: starch from potatos or wheat.
  
• Enzymes split plant-based starches into their ground components and modify these. In this manner, a variety of ingredients or additives may be obtained with precisely specified characteristics. Several enzymes that are used in such procedures are manufactured with the aid of genetically modified micro-organisms and include, for example, amylases, glucose-isomerase and pullulanase (saccharification of starches).

Labelling: starch-based food ingredients are subject to labelling if they have been produced directly from GM plants (e.g., maize). Whether such labelling applies to caramel, which is derived from starch in several procedural steps, remains equivocal.

Enzymes and the manner of their production generally are not included on the list of ingredients.