There’s a moment in every high-protein RTD project where the formula looks perfect on paper — and then you pull a sample after UHT and it looks like cottage cheese.
You’ve been there. The protein crashed. The mouthfeel went chalky. The lab bench is covered in beakers of progressively worse-looking iterations. And the solution everyone reaches for is the same: add another gum. Bump the buffer. Increase the homogenization pressure. Try a different cellulose grade.
It works — sort of. You get a product that holds together on the shelf. But you also get a label that reads like a chemistry textbook and a cost-in-use that makes procurement wince.
We think there’s a better way. But first, let’s talk about why the conventional approach keeps failing.
The 30g Ceiling
Most stabilizer systems for protein beverages were designed for products in the 15–20g protein range. They work fine there. Cellulose gum provides viscosity. Gellan offers suspension. A phosphate buffer keeps the pH in a range where proteins don’t aggregate.
But the market has moved. Consumers want 30g, 35g, even 42g protein per serving. And at those concentrations, the old playbook breaks down:
Microcrystalline cellulose (MCC) starts contributing chalkiness above 25g protein. That gritty, powdery mouthfeel that consumers describe as “sand” in their protein shake reviews? That’s MCC hitting its ceiling. It was designed to provide opacity and body in lower-protein systems, not to manage the dense protein loads the market is demanding now.
Cellulose gum (CMC) adds viscosity, but viscosity alone doesn’t solve protein aggregation during thermal processing. You can make a thick, slimy beverage that still separates. And there’s the consumer perception issue: “cellulose gum” is increasingly recognized as processed wood fiber. There’s a reason major CPGs are actively reformulating to remove it.
Buffer salts — dipotassium phosphate, sodium hexametaphosphate, trisodium citrate — are the invisible scaffolding holding most high-protein RTD formulations together. They work by shifting the pH and sequestering the effect of divalent ions to prevent protein-protein interactions during UHT processing. But they add label lines, contribute to sodium content, and they’re treating the symptom (aggregation at a given pH) rather than addressing the underlying protein instability.
Gellan gum provides excellent suspension — in systems where you can precisely control the ion environment. The problem is that real-world manufacturing isn’t a bench-top trial. The effect of water hardness and mineral content can significantly affect consistency. Gellan is a precision instrument, and precision instruments fail when conditions aren’t controlled. In retort-processed coffee beverages, gellan can de-isolate entirely — losing function at the exact moment you need it most.
The Stacking Problem
So what does a typical high-protein RTD stabilizer system look like? Something like this:
Ingredients: Water, (Milk, Pea, Soy) Protein Isolate, Natural Flavors, Cellulose Gum, Gellan Gum, Dipotassium Phosphate, Sodium Citrate, Carrageenan, Sucralose
That’s five stabilization-related ingredients (cellulose gum, gellan, DKP, SHMP, carrageenan) doing a job that, functionally, comes down to one thing: keep the protein stable and suspended through processing and shelf life.
Each of those ingredients adds cost, a label line, and a supply chain dependency — and if you’re using acacia gum, you’re sourcing from a region with well-documented supply volatility. Each adds a formulation variable that can go wrong during scale-up.
And here’s the thing every formulator knows but rarely says out loud: this system is fragile. Change your co-packer, change your water source, change your protein supplier’s lot — and you’re back in the lab tweaking ratios. At high inclusion rates, heavy stabilizer systems also create gumming issues that plague co-packers’ filling lines during UHT runs.
A Different Approach: Working With the Protein, Not Against It
What if, instead of managing protein instability with layers of gums and buffers, you used an ingredient that interacts directly with the protein to prevent aggregation in the first place?
That’s the principle behind SeaTex. Rather than adding viscosity around the protein (the cellulose approach) or shifting the pH away from the isoelectric point (the buffer approach), SeaTex works through multiple mechanisms simultaneously: its carbohydrate fraction builds viscosity and a physical suspension network, its protein component provides surface activity that stabilizes individual particles, and its mineral content contributes natural buffering capacity and ionic interactions that favor stability. It’s the combination of these fractions working together — not any single mechanism — that gives you the performance.
The result is stabilization at the particle level, not the bulk level. In benchmark testing: 0% creaming, 100% suspension, no phase separation. Which means:
• No buffer system required. The protein is stabilized through direct polysaccharide-protein interaction, no buffering salts formulation needed. Fewer ingredients, cleaner label, lower sodium.
• Cold-water dispersible. Brief high-shear dispersion followed by moderate agitation — no extended high-shear activation like MCC systems that require Silverson or double homogenization. It integrates into existing batching processes without specialized equipment.
• Thermal processing validated. UHT (direct and indirect), HTST, and retort processing—tested in neutral and low acid beverages like meal replacement, milks, and coffee beverages.
• Low inclusion rate. Typical usage is 0.02–0.3%, compared to multi-component stabilizer systems at significantly higher combined inclusion rates.
What the label looks like:
Ingredients: Water, (Milk, Pea, Soy) Protein Isolate, Natural Flavors, Seaweed Powder, Sucralose
Four stabilization ingredients become one. The label tells the story.
Where This Gets Interesting — And Where It Gets Tricky
We’d be doing you a disservice if we pretended this was simple. Protein stabilization in RTD beverages is a complex problem, and any ingredient — including ours — has boundaries.
SeaTex has shown excellent results in a UHT-treated high plant-protein RTD beverage (soy + pea isolates validated at 10% protein with 7-month stability, no phase separation, completely homogeneous). Performance varies by protein type, concentration, and processing conditions. A 25g milk protein RTD going through indirect UHT is a different challenge than a 35g pea-rice blend going through retort.
The pH window, the mineral content of your protein source, and the specific thermal profile of your co-packer’s equipment all matter. That’s true for any stabilizer system — the difference is that with SeaTex, you’re optimizing one variable instead of five.
What’s Your System?
Every formulation is different. The protein source, the concentration target, the processing method, the co-packer’s equipment, the retail channel requirements — all of it shapes which stabilization approach will work.
If you’re currently stacking gums and buffers to keep a high-protein RTD together, or if you’re hitting the MCC chalkiness ceiling, or if your label is longer than you’d like it to be — we’d like to hear about your specific system.
Our technical assistant can walk through SeaTex compatibility with your formulation parameters, discuss inclusion rates for your protein concentration, and help you understand whether a single-ingredient approach is realistic for your product.
Marine Biologics develops SeaTex, a seaweed-derived clean-label stabilizer for food and beverage applications. Reach out to our team at contact@marinebiologics.com.
