IFT First 2024: AI and nature-based solutions advance sugar reduction

25 Jul 2024 --- Sugar reduction was a major theme at IFT First 2024 in Chicago, US (July 15–17). Ingredient and technology companies showcased natural and novel solutions to help F&B manufacturers overcome a difficult challenge: how to replace the taste of sugar — traditionally the industry benchmark for sweetness — while supporting healthier diets. 

US consumers are increasingly demanding sugar-reduced and sugar-free options amid rising health problems like obesity, diabetes and tooth decay. According to the American Heart Association, adults and children in the country consume, on average, 17 teaspoons of added sugar daily — more than 2–3 times the recommended amount.

We spoke to several key innovators in the sugar reduction and sugar alternatives space about their unique solutions to this national health crisis and the challenges associated with maintaining or even elevating the indulgent taste profiles consumers crave.

AI provides answers
US powerhouse Ingredion revealed it is utilizing AI modeling to predict sweetness outcomes and better understand consumer relationships to sugar. AI tools can help create consumer-preferred solutions, improve functionality and generate customized, cost-effective ingredients that target unmet consumer needs.

“We executed a global study and discovered that consumers at large are shifting their preferences for sweet taste — it used to be that sugar was the gold standard, and it’s still a key component of the sweet taste profile, but artificial sweeteners and other low-calorie sweeteners have taken over,” Adams Berzins, senior manager for global sugar reduction applications and customer agility lead at Ingredion, tells Food Ingredients First.

Berzins at Ingredion sees AI predictive modeling as a useful tool for delivering consumer-preferred products.“When moving to a plant-based solution, you have to design with a combination of different sweeteners and maybe a little bit of sugar. The beauty of our AI model is that it’s building the nexus of understanding precise consumer preferences and formulating new products.”

“Our AI model overlays consumer preferences, and those things that drive consumer liking may not align with what we traditionally expect from previous research. AI is layering those together for a better understanding of, not only whether it is technically closer to the sugar profile, but if it’s able to achieve a higher degree of liking from the consumer while helping us understand the segmentation of those customers.”

Although this project is in its infancy, the company has validated some solutions already on the market with its AI predictive modeling.

Beyond artificial sweeteners
IFT First 2024 showcased the proliferation of natural sweeteners targeted at health-conscious consumers who increasingly view artificial sweeteners as ingredients to avoid.

HealthTech BioActives (HTBA) launched a natural sweetening ingredient for F&B products at the event. It also showcased Citrosa+, a patent-protected ingredient derived from bitter oranges, which is 1,500 times sweeter than sugar and works in synergy with high-intensity sweeteners and bulk sugars to fine-tune sweetness in beverages.

“People would like to have less sugar because they are aware of the health issues, but they will not compromise on taste. Consumers also want ‘natural’ — this is an unstoppable trend,” says Jordi Ferre, general manager for North America & Global Food Division head at HTBA.

“It is a big ask to find something identical to sugar without the calories. When you replace sugar with natural ingredients like stevia or monk fruit, you don’t have the exact same taste, but this is where our solutions come in. We make natural, reduced sugar formulations taste more similar to sugar, from a sweetness perspective but also in terms of mouthfeel.”Martins at NutraEx says well-balanced ingredient combinations are crucial to replacing sugar.

Meanwhile, NutraEx demonstrated its capabilities in helping F&B manufacturers replace sugar in their products with indulgent sweeteners with less or no sugar.

“The primary issue when you remove sugar is getting the taste right,” explains Harvey Martins, VP of business development. “Natural sugar alternatives cannot behave exactly the same way as sugar in terms of the sweet profile, so the challenge is to provide a well-balanced combination to get the taste and sweetness right.”

At IFT First 2024, NutraEx Food introduced a “sugar blocker” — l-arabinose — which can inhibit sugar absorption. The company sees “sugar blocking” as an important innovation area for applications in which sugar cannot be replaced.

Reengineering nature
Another company taking inspiration from nature is Elo Life Systems. The US-based firm believes that by reengineering fruit molecules, it can deliver the sweeteners required to help tackle the sugar health crisis in an affordable, environmentally sustainable and scalable way.

“We’ve come across some interesting flavors and sweeteners out in nature, but the options for producing those are limited because there’s not enough of the native crops. But you don’t want to force farming on the Amazon — you need to do something smarter, so we go down into the DNA and look at where the enzymes work together to create these molecules,” Todd Rands, CEO at Elo, tells us.

Rands at Elo believes a scalable solution to sugar reduction is reengineering fruit molecules.“Then we can recreate that same natural pathway to produce the identical ingredient in our research facility. So if it’s an exotic flower in the Amazon rainforest producing a certain pigment or flavor you want to have in the food system, we can go put it into a crop that we can grow and scale and produce the same ingredient, but do it a lot more affordably and without harming the environment.”

Elo sees sugar reduction as the area where it could have the most significant impact. One of the company’s investors, the NoVo Foundation, is focused on eliminating diabetes.

“Food is the front line against such diseases, and if we can get excess sugar out of our diets, we’re going to have an immediate impact on health. We found this fantastic natural sweetener — monk fruit — but it’s expensive and only grows in exotic places. We’re able to reengineer the sweet molecules for great taste, eliminate the off-notes and do it at a price point that allows the food system to use it,” explains Rands.

Elo’s monk fruit sweetener is zero-calorie and 300 times sweeter than sugar, meaning less volume is required. In the next 12 months, the company plans to launch its product with its first big customer and allow prospects to test how it tastes and integrates with their F&B formulations.

By Joshua Poole