MacDonald, Gerard Alexander (Sandy) (Holland College)

Purpose

Simply for Life (SFL), a New Brunswick based company with 36 clinics across Canada, is a leader in health education, developing science based dietary plans and managing and controlling health issues through nutrition and convenient, healthy food choices. They have retail stores that offer healthy products, made locally that are incorporated into their nutritional plans. Currently, the snack food options available within their nutrition plans do not meet the high standards of nutritional content or quality that Simply for Life strives for. Canada's Smartest Kitchen, located within Holland College's Culinary Institute of Canada, is a culinary creativity powerhouse that has expertise in food product development, food science and marketing. Simply for Life had approached CSK about a collaboration to develop a convenient, high protein cookie without any additional preservatives to be incorporated into their nutrition plans. SFL is eager to expand, and the move to start creating their own line of products is a shift in their current business model and a direction that is needed to drive sales for the company. In the initial project, funded by an Engage grant, CSK and SFL developed three new high protein snack cookies. Those prototypes were an apple crumble, Mexican chocolate, and peanut butter chocolate chip. In sensory evaluations conducted at CSK, each prototype scored more favorably than products currently in SFL product line. The goal of the Engage Plus work is to take those prototypes to the next stage of development by working with SFL and a co-packer to scale up the bench top formulations in full production.