Published: November 30, 2007 11:50 pm            

Company launches fried chicken fat blocker

GLOUCESTER, Mass. — As statistics point to expanding waistlines and schools struggle to make lunches healthier, one Gloucester company has a message for the health conscious: eat more fried chicken.

Proteus Industries, a 6-year-old company that developed a process to block the fat that enters food while frying fish, has officially launched the same type of blocker for fried chicken. Through their sales agent, they are in talks to get their fried chicken on the menus of 50 school districts nationwide, beginning as early as next month.

“Popcorn chicken was taken off school menus because it can’t meet (nutrition) standards,” said Tim Driscoll, Proteus’ chief executive officer. “We can do it.”

Food treated with the blocker, dubbed Nutrilean, looks like fried chicken and tastes like fried chicken. It is, in fact, fried chicken, dipped in hot oil and fried, but it is missing one thing: around half the fat for which fried chicken is so infamous.

Compared with a serving of regular fried chicken, at 200 calories and 80 grams of fat, fried chicken treated with Nutrilean has 160 calories and 30 grams of fat. Keeping the fat content to 30 percent or less is key to making the product appealing to institutions such as school cafeterias, which are held to that standard by the government.

The concept of a fat-blocking protein was developed in 2001 by Proteus founder and chief scientist Stephen Kelleher, who discovered a way to isolate pure protein from fish scraps, turn it into a powder, dissolve it in water and coat fish with it. When the breaded fish was treated, Kelleher found, it blocked the cooking oil from entering the fish.

Proteus executives claim that taste tests have shown food tastes the same as or better than it would without the coating; the fat-blocking shield also serves to keep moisture in, enhancing the meat’s juiciness.

“There are two things we see consistently,” Kelleher said. “The fat goes down and the moisture goes up.”

Since 2002, Proteus has been selling the coating for fish, called NutraPure, to Good Harbor Fillet, a fish processor with an office right next door. The low-fat fried fish has made its way into supermarkets and school systems, including Gloucester’s, and is slated to become the first fried food in Weight Watchers’ frozen foods line next year.

If fish has been such a success, say the executives at Proteus, imagine what they can do with chicken.

Two years ago, Kelleher gained U.S. Department of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration approval for Nutrilean, the chicken protein coating with the same capabilities as NutraPure.

Proteus plans to apply for a Healthy Heart designation from the American Heart Association after it has been tested a bit more, Driscoll said. Currently, the product is meeting the Heart Association’s standards.

Since then, said Kelleher, it’s been “testing, testing and more testing” as chicken processors determine whether Nutrilean will work under their conditions.

Executives are unable to reveal the names of school districts or companies with whom their sales agent, Texas-based Comfort Creek, is negotiating.

“We’re dealing with the who’s who of the chicken world,” Kelleher said.

Schools are the company’s main focus as it launches the product commercially because schools must meet government standards for fat and other nutrients with their lunches each week, Driscoll said. Because Nutrilean helps keep the fat in fried food down, it gives cafeterias the option of serving the stuff that children like to eat.

The company says the new protein is not only good for coating fried chicken pieces, but also keeps the fat out of any fried item, such as jalapeno poppers or mozzarella sticks. While the fish protein coating, NutraPure, would have worked on those items as well, the company worried that a fish protein had too much potential to set off allergic reactions in people who would never dream that fish would be incorporated into a piece of fried chicken or cheese.

The protein powder costs chicken processors between 2 and 10 cents a pound, depending on volume. Kelleher said that because Nutrilean allows the meat to retain moisture, the cost increase can be made up by the fact that the yield, or volume of chicken, is increased by 3 percent to 5 percent in retained moisture.

Nutrilean is manufactured in Alabama. As Proteus expands, Driscoll said, it will need to hire more full-time staff for that site. He said that Gloucester staff may expand slightly as well. NutraPure is manufactured at the Good Harbor Fillet plant.

Kelleher and his executives want to take the company global. They’re testing the product in New Zealand, Australia, Chile and Europe and hoping to market it in the United States not only to schools, but to restaurant chains, supermarkets and other major suppliers of fried chicken.

“You can dream it’s going to be everybody,” Kelleher said. “We think, and we’ve been told by people who know these things, that there’s really nothing like it.”



Kristen Grieco writes for the Gloucester Daily Times of Gloucester, Mass. E-mail her at kgrieco@ecnnews.com

        

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