What challenges do healthy snacks (high-protein, high-fiber, gluten-free) pose to extruders?

How can snack manufacturers overcome those challenges?

There are different challenges with the 3 different categories of extruded ingredients. For instance, with abrasive inclusions, hardened cutting blades are needed to improve wearability and maintain clean cuts. Sticky formulations benefit from feed systems like ours at Handtmann® with designs that reduce friction and have short product paths. Material selection for the feed system is also part of the reduced friction design process and specialized coatings can also be used to reduce the coefficient of friction. Water jacketed temperature control has also been very helpful in managing things like the product flow of fudge on extruded baked products with our valve free depositing system, for instance. The ability to extrude clean shapes also supports precision portioning that is most valuable to bakers when they want to reduce the giveaway with their expensive healthy inclusions and ingredients.