A sweet culture shock: Chr. Hansen solution reduces added sugar in fermented dairy

07 May 2019 --- Chr. Hansen is set to launch Sweety Y-1, claimed to be the first culture in the world that allows dairy manufacturers to create naturally sweeter products while reducing added sugar. The culture helps address modern market trends and consumer demands for healthy food by reducing added sugar without compromising the good taste of the product. Sweety Y-1 is an innovative culture solution allowing the natural creation of sweetness by unlocking milk’s own resource – lactose.

Sweety Y-1 is a culture solution using Streptococcus thermophilus and Lactobacillus bulgaricus cultures. It can convert the existing sugars in milk, using more of the lactose and yielding glucose – which provides a greater sweetness intensity. This means that product developers can add less sugar and still get the same sweet-tasting product, resulting in a healthier product offering.

In today’s market for fermented dairy products, the pressure is on for dairy manufacturers to reduce added sugar, especially in yogurt. But as Jessica Bentley, Commercial Development Manager Fresh Dairy at Chr. Hansen explains, sweetness perception is a complex topic, particularly in the case of a fermented dairy product.

“One of the most important factors in yogurt is the interaction of sweet and sour,” she tells FoodIngredientsFirst. “Common yogurt cultures can be subject to post acidification, where the pH of the yogurt gradually drops over shelf-life and it tastes sourer and less sweet. Not only is Sweety a mild culture, but it also shows superior pH stability over the shelf-life of the yogurt. This means Sweety yogurts maintain more constant sweetness over shelf-life and added sugar is not needed to mask post-acidification.”

The Sweety solution can take the industry forward by helping to reduce the added sugar while maintaining the sweet taste in a natural way.

Many solutions currently available to reduce sugar while keeping the sweet taste are not natural. “As consumers look for clean label products and avoid artificial ingredients, these solutions don’t necessarily help dairy producers. The Sweety solution is natural,” she notes.

Health organizations, governments and retailers are setting objectives to reduce sugar in foods while consumers are increasingly focusing on sugar content and looking for healthy and natural products that taste great. This leaves dairies with the challenge of how to meet these demands.

Another challenge on the way for dairy is in the labeling. “Not just total sugar, but ‘added sugar’ must be declared on food labels in the US from January 2020 for large companies and 2021 for small companies. Highlighting added sugars on the label creates pressure for manufacturers to create healthier products, as more transparency will show the integrity of brands,” Bentley notes. “The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) is also focusing on ‘added sugar,’ stating that they will provide scientific advice on the daily intake of added sugar in food by early 2020,” she adds.

“Sweety Y-1 is a mild culture with superior pH stability. This enables dairy manufacturers to create products that maintain sweetness throughout shelf-life. As the first and only company to launch such a solution, we expect a lot of interest and are excited to engage with our customers,” Bentley elaborates.

Sweety Y-1 is a culture solution using Streptococcus thermophilus and Lactobacillus bulgaricus cultures. It can convert the existing sugars in milk, using more of the lactose and yielding glucose – which provides a greater sweetness intensity. Using Sweety Y-1 cultures in the production of fermented dairy foods enables dairy producers to:

• Enhance sweetness by converting the existing sugar in milk.
• Maintain the sweet taste during shelf-life with very low post-acidification.
• Create natural and clean label products without the use of artificial sweeteners.

Bentley explains that since there are many factors that influence sweetness perception, the sucrose reduction potential of the new solution depends very much on the recipe and characteristics of the reference product.

“In our trials we set the bar high, by choosing a relatively mild reference product and a mid-range sugar content,” she notes. “We can confidently say that a standard yogurt with 6 percent added sugar can be matched in sweetness intensity to a Sweety yogurt containing 5 percent added sugar (i.e., 17 percent reduction in this scenario),” Bentley continues. This has been validated by a trained sensory panel.

If the reference product is sourer, there is potential to further reduce added sugar due to the mild flavor of Sweety which supports the perception of sweetness. “Even a small reduction can be enough – in order to comply for use of a health logo, or to be under a limit set by a retailer, or reach a target set by health organizations and governments,” she adds.

The ingredient also has a clean label advantage. “Sweety is simply labeled in the ingredients list as ‘culture,’ or by the mention of the specific strains ‘S. thermophilus and L. bulgaricus.’ Sweety requires no specific labeling and it is completely natural,” says Bentley.

During the development of the Sweety cultures, Chr. Hansen has engaged with select dairy producers to test the cultures in industrial scale. “Since these field trials were so successful, we can already find yogurt on the market which uses Sweety,” she notes.

Sweety is suitable for fermented dairy applications such as quark, fromage blanc, fermented milks and yogurt. The Sweety Y-1 culture includes both Streptococcus thermophilus and Lactobacillus bulgaricus strains which are required for the standard of identity of yogurt in some countries.

“It’s the fermented dairy arena where Sweety fits, as the technology is based on fermentation and the cultures require lactose which is naturally present in milk,” says Bentley. “In the segment of fermented dairy, not only can Sweety be used to reduce added sugar in sweetened products, it can also be applied in plain products to increase sweetness,” she adds.

Innovation will not stop there. “As we already see great interest in Sweety cultures we will continue on this innovation track, working on the next generation of Sweety cultures, further improving performance,” says Bentley. “It is a really exciting area of biotechnology and we have an amazing team of scientists around this,” she notes.

Earlier this year it was announced that Chr. Hansen finished top of the Corporate Knights’ Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World Index and this ingredient will perform on a sustainability platform too.

“At Chr. Hansen, we are dedicated to improving food and health – not only for this generation but for the generations to come. To do this, we are actively contributing to the UN Global Goals, including goal number three: Good health and well-being. Sweety Y-1 fits this agenda perfectly by using nature’s own resources to provide good tasting fermented dairy products with less sugar added, enhancing a healthy lifestyle,” Bentley concludes.

 By Robin Wyers