What’s next in sugar reduction: The Symrise roadmap for great taste
05 Jun 2025 | Symrise AG
Join this webinar to explore the Symrise roadmap for great taste in sugar reduced products, addressing the market shift towards healthier and natural solutions.
Over the past decades, consumers, retailers and regulators have grown increasingly aware of the detrimental health effects associated with immoderate sugar intake, such as obesity and cardiovascular diseases.
This leads to a growing market for sugar alternatives like sweeteners and supporting tools like taste balancing solutions. At the same time, consumer expectations for sweetness solutions are changing. The market focus is shifting towards healthier and natural solutions, and both sugar and non-sugar sweeteners are under scrutiny. But how is Symrise addressing these market shifts to support food and beverage manufacturers in developing consumer preferred sugar reduced products?
Join this webinar to find out and learn more about the Symrise roadmap in the context of symlife™ taste balancing and sugar reduction.
Hello and welcome to today's webinar, hosted by Food Ingredients First and sponsored by Symrise.
Thanks for joining us and welcome to all of our viewers around the world.
I'm Louis Gur Langton, editor at CNS Media.
I'll be moderating this webinar titled What's Next in Sugar Reduction, The Symrise Roadmap for Great Taste.
Awareness of sugar's health impacts from obesity to cardiovascular disease has grown significantly in recent decades.
As a result, demand is rising for alternatives like sweeteners and taste balancing solutions.
At the same time, consumer expectations for sweetness solutions are changing.
The market focus is shifting towards healthier and natural solutions, and both sugar and non-sugar sweeteners are under scrutiny.
In this webinar, we'll learn how Symrise addresses these market shifts to support food and beverage manufacturers in developing consumer preferred sugar reduced products.
We're joined today by Leif Iago, global marketing manager for food and beverage at Simrise.
Life brings deep expertise in decoding consumer and market trends and helped develop SymVision AI, the company's trend prediction tool.
Also with us is Natalia Kashkovskaya, Global sugar reduction Platform Director at Symrise, working within the Business Incubation Group.
Natalia leads strategy for the company's sugar reduction initiatives worldwide.
Welcome both.
We'll begin with your presentation and then move on to our questions.
Take it away.
OK.
Thank you very much for this introduction and hello everyone from my side.
As mentioned, we are happy to talk with you today about the Symriser roadmap for great taste in the context of sugar reduction.
And on this slide, you'll see the agenda we prepared for the session.
First, we will have a look at the market contexts.
Why do we see a growing need for sugar reduction and how is the market evolving?
After that, we will look at changing consumer expectations in this context, because we see a market shift towards natural and healthier solutions for sweetness and sugar reduction.
Then we will present the SimRse roadmap, so how we address these market changes, and in the last part we will highlight some specific actions, to bring the strategy to life.
So we, you will learn more about some solutions and projects.
So let's start with the market context and the growing need for sugar reduction.
As many of you know, health is one of the most important consumer needs and innovation drivers in food and beverages for years.
And this was even accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic as consumer awareness for healthier lifestyles and diets grew.
So over the past decades, consumers, retailers and regulators have grown increasingly aware of the detrimental health effects of moderate sugar intake, such as obesity and cardiovascular diseases.
And as a result, we for example, see more mandatory food labels or sugar taxes today impacting the food and beverage industry.
But at the same time, as shown here on the right side, taste is still the number one preference driver for consumers when buying food and beverages.
So the challenge for the industry is clear, providing sugar reduced products with good taste.
As a consequence, we see a continuous need for sugar reduction solutions to reduce overall sugar intake and at the same time provide great tasting products.
And this is also reflected in the market numbers you see here.
The global market is still dominated by sugar, with a value of roughly $100 billion but it's growing quite slowly with a keer of 1%.
Roughly 7% of this market represents sugar alternatives and FMPs, so-called flavors with modifying properties.
These FMPs help to optimize taste and sugar reduced formulations.
And it's very interesting to see that these markets grow faster than the traditional sugar market, with a KA of 5% and 7%.
And this shows that the relevance of these solutions for sugar reduction is growing and getting more and more relevant.
On the right side you see one important reason for this growing need.
Even if we say that health is getting more important for consumers, we still have alarming numbers of people being overweight or living with diabetes.
And both can be caused by a moderate sugar intake, and sugar reduction in food and beverages can be one factor to bring these numbers down in the future.
What changes today is that not only sugar is under scrutiny anymore, but also non-sugar sweeteners.
So we see a change in consumer expectations and also sweeteners to replace sugar are more and more questioned.
And one example of why this is the case is a guideline from the World Health Organization from 2023 on non-sugar sweeteners.
It's explained in the middle of the slide, and it mainly says that the long-term use of non-sugar sweeteners may potentially produce undesirable effects, and that non-sugar sweeteners should not be used as a means to achieve weight control or to reduce the risk of diseases.
And these kind of publications support a shift in consumer expectations.
So consumers more and more question ingredients, and in the context of sugar reduction, this means that they increasingly reflect on the impact of sweeteners on their health.
And also the type and source of sweeteners is getting more important to them.
The question for us is now, what does it mean for the sugar reduction market and what's next?
And to answer these questions, I will now hand over to Natalia, who will show you latest market shifts and our Sunrise roadmap to address them.
Over to you, Natalia.
Thank you, wife.
And good day from my side to everybody who is joining the presentation today.
So let's talk about what is next in sugar reduction.
So we know that governments are tightening regulations on sugar.
Beverage companies are trying to increase the innovation to reduce sugar in the formulations.
Consumers are changing the attitude to sugar, but as to the sweeteners.
And recent studies and publications regarding sugar and non-sugar sweeteners pro provoke considerable debate regarding this topic.
And all this shifting the focus towards healthier, sustainable and value-added solutions.
So what specifically is happening with regard to consumers in this area?
We know that consumers are willing to have more natural solutions against artificial, and that's, that's how they vote for the more natural formulations.
So the development of more sustainable biotech solution to produce natural sweeteners is actually enabling to find those solutions to be implemented in the recipes and in this case, we are talking about Stevia, RbM, Rb D, new qualities of stevia, morocytes, rare sugars, allulose and tattos.
Sweet proteins, like brasin and thalmatine and monolin being produced through biotechnologies.
One example of those technologies would be precision fermentation, and precision fermentation is something new, which is not the traditional fermentation which consumers know, which also provokes debates among the consumers, but we are seeing more and more consumers.
Finding more benefits in the sustainability of, precision fermentation and sustainability becoming one of the drivers to become, or to get this consumer preference.
So let's now have a look at the sugar reduction market and what kind of sweeteners are evolving and I expect it to grow in the next 56 years.
We are clearly seeing that the trend is going to support the naturally occurring sweeteners, and you see them on the left side of the chat when we are talking about sweet proteins, rare sugars, and monk fruit.
They are still niche, but they propose, they provide high growth and, high value.
We also see on the right side of the chart that stevia, which has been currently an established sweetener as as FMP.
They are high growth and high value area.
I just wanted to mention, to, to give a little bit more detail with regard to Tagatos because Tagatos is not mentioned in high growth and high value area which is on the left.
And there is explanation for that because Tagatos currently , will be labeled as added sugar in, the US, as a declaration.
And we are waiting that FDS, FDA will be lifting this, labeling from Tagatos, which will be similar to Alolos, and that will be, a very good start for Tagatos to be implemented, in the formulations, first in the US.
So the price, the price analysis of the sweeteners, shows that natural sweeteners still have a challenge to compete against sugar, and we know that when formulating natural sweeteners in the recipes, we always target to be at least at the level of sugar and not to exceed that.
Or sometimes even to compete with artificial artificial sweeteners, but that's a challenge.
We are currently seeing that stevia is making a big progress to close the gap in cost.
And be comparable to the sugar thanks to technology and scalability, and we are anticipating that in the next 5-6 years, we might see that monk fruit, rare sugars with proteins will follow the trend and close the gap, at least to sugar.
Thanks to the biotechnology and possibility to scale them and to make them available for the more recipes and formulations.
On this chart, it's a combination of, everything which we see on the market starting from ingredients, technologies, and coming to the consumer expectations.
And this landscape shows what we are having today and how the market potentially might develop, tomorrow.
And here, I just would like to give you example of sweet protein to explain how to read this chart.
If we stay with sweet protein example, so sweet proteins, From a technology point of view, they are combining artificial intelligence and predictive analytics or computation with biotechnology, being primarily precision fermentation.
To produce those sustainable and high-intensity sweeteners which meet consumer expectations like better for the environment, plant-based, vegetarian, low glycemic index.
Another example might be rare sugars, rare sugars and, we already touched rare sugars a little bit talking about Teatols.
So rare sugars can be produced through enzymatic conversion, which is also part of biotechnology.
And this allowed to address consumer needs like prebiotic, no artificial sweetener, gut, and digestive claims.
So you see how this all connects through this chart going from ingredient to technology and consumer expectation.
Now let's have a look how SimRse answers to the changing market, consumers and industry landscape.
Symrise is an industry leader in taste balancing solutions, hence, FMP's flavors with modifying properties.
We leverage our current assets and developing them further by evaluating new technologies.
We are constantly building our application excellence, mastering interactions between our FMPs and other ingredients.
We're working on new prediction tools and we will give you more information on the next slides.
We scout for new sources of sweetness, for new technologies.
And this might have several faceates.
For example, we look at new ingredients as FMPs, as flavors, and we look at them as sweeteners.
And we also evaluate how our existing FNPs working together with new sweeteners, and you see on the slide, we mentioned rare sugars and sweet proteins, so we mentioned already them through the presentation.
We, you might ask what are the criteria, how we choose, materials, how we choose partners.
So the main criteria, criteria for us would be sustainability, so we look for sustainable solutions.
And solutions which support health alignments.
Often associated with metabolic health.
That's what you see on the outside of of the circle.
The more information on how we precisely work to solve those tasks which we see in front of us, will come on the next slides.
OK, thanks a lot, Natalia, for the explanations.
Yeah, now we are moving to the last chapter for today, the actions or let's say how we bring this roadmap that Natalia just showed to us, to life with concrete projects and solutions.
First of all, I would like to, yeah, tell you more or remind you of our current portfolio of taste balancing solutions.
They can help you to balance and optimize overall taste and good for your products like sugar reduced food and beverages.
In this way, these solutions enable you to address the market need for sugar reduction, for healthier lifestyles, and great tasting products at the same time.
So when food and beverage manufacturers reduce or remove unwanted ingredients like sugar, but also sodium or fat, or when they enrich products with desired ingredients like vitamins, minerals, or proteins, in these cases, Simlife taste balancing solutions support in keeping the great taste in products.
They mainly do this by masking unwanted offnotes like bitterness or acidity that for example can appear when using sweeteners, and they boost specific taste dynamics, for example, the flavor profile impact, sweetness perception, and mouthfeel.
With SimLife taste balancing, we are following a holistic approach to bridge these taste gaps and good for your products.
And this wheel shows the different areas where our solutions can support.
Starting at the bottom left, we can support you by rebalancing the sweetness and saltiness perception, by optimizing the overall taste profile of products containing less sugar or less salt.
Another aspect is adding exciting taste sensations, for example for cooling, warming, freshness, or juiciness.
Also building umami by providing the richness and complexity of umami plays an important role.
And improving mouthfeel and masking undesirable off notes are important to make good for your products tasty.
So this wheel is just an overview of the key areas we are focusing on, and it's important to see that sweetness perception in the context of sugar reduction plays a very important role, obviously, but other aspects need to be considered as when optimizing overall taste profiles of good for your products.
And this slide shows how taste balancing can work in the context of sugar reduction.
So here we have an example from our Asian colleagues showing different routes of sugar reduction.
So first on the left side you see a regular full sugar beverage, and you can also see an example for an ingredient list.
Scenario one is presenting a silent sugar reduction.
The scenario is called ideal match here because it matches the taste of the full sugar variant.
In this case, we would use 20% of sugar and balance the taste profile to match the regular beverage by using a SimLife sweetness optimizer.
And as you can see, the ingredient list is not changing compared to the regular version, as our taste balancing solutions fall under the flavor regulation and can be labeled as flavors.
The second scenario you'll see here is called stay familiar.
Here, a higher reduction of sugar is the objective, in this case, 70%.
And to do this, and to keep the sweetness level, the addition of a sweetener might be needed.
So a natural sweetener was added in this case.
And you can see at the bottom that not only a SIML sweetness optimizer was used here, but also a SIMLife masking solution to mask unwanted off notes.
And these two solutions optimized overall taste and balanced out unwanted off notes.
And what you can also see when looking at the ingredient list is that there are some changes now.
For example, you need to add the sweetener that you added as an ingredient.
Again, this is just an example of how taste balancing can work in the context of sugar reduction, and yeah, we are happy to discuss your specific projects and needs with you and provide regulatory support when it comes to ingredient lists and labeling.
Now I would like to hand over to Natalia again, who will present some additional projects we are working on.
Back to you, Natalia.
Thank you, life.
Explaining CMI's approach, let me just mention that the example which life has been presenting on the previous slide was related to the, APAC, because, the sweeteners which has been used, and mentioned there were erythritol and RP-M.
On this slide, I would like to give you the explanation.
Regarding symbize holistic approach, which Symrise offers, combining extensive knowledge, About our taste balancing solutions.
And combined three effects with existing food additives, like sweeteners and flavor enhancers, which you see in the middle, as as novel food.
But also building up the knowledge regarding the future raw materials, which you see on the right, on the right side where we mentioned biotech, rare sugars as an example of biotech, sweet proteins which are definitely emerging, sweeteners.
And of course, we are providing extensive regulatory support because we all know how difficult it is to follow all regulatory guidelines with regard to sweeteners, novel food, flavor enhancers, flavors in different regions.
We also have, I also have mentioned talking about the Symrise roadmap, that we are always working on new applications and, prediction tools.
And here I would like to highlight, the upcoming new prediction tool which SIMRS, is currently working on.
Many, many of you probably have heard that SimRice has launched SimVision AI in October last year, 2024, which is unique, artificial intelligence-based prediction tool to understand, to understand, the flavor and ingredients trends.
Now, we are finalizing a new a new holistic data modeling and prediction tool to decode Swiness based on a systematic design of experiment, which would enable faster development times, and would allow better outcomes, for the new product development.
So please stay tuned, for the new announcements, regarding the new prediction tools coming out.
Talking about, how we build, the future and preparing ourselves for the future, I would like to mention one project which is called Sweet Spot, which is a consortium partnership project with the University of Wageningen and, other partners, which you see on the bottom on this slide.
So the project is supposed to enhance scientific understanding how sugary places, hence sweeteners affect texture and flavor, and how the consumption of non-nutritious sweeteners might impact good microbiota composition and human meta.
Public health, which actually bring a lot of debate to the industry and bring a lot of confusion to the consumers.
So our purpose here is to understand, to understand the scientific background of all those effects of non-nutritionalitiness.
Going next, we would like to give you one example how, SIMRS brings partnerships and collaborations.
To help new sustainable sweeteners find its way to the market.
Our partnership with Bonamos in this case is targeting to support Bonamo's unique enzymatic technology for the production of affordable and healthy Tagatos and actually help to scale Tagatos globally.
We know that combination of Tagatos with steam rice taste balancing solution can help to bring to the market the best tasting and healthy.
Sweetening solutions and we bring that to the market using the network of distributors so far in the United States, because the limitation for Tagatos is Tagatos produced by Bonamos is that it is allowed in the US.
But the allowance for other countries is still in progress.
But let me tell you a little bit more about Tagatos because Tagatos is a natural origin sweetener with clinically proven health benefits.
Tagatos is, as I mentioned already, so far this partnership is targeting the US market because Tagatos has allowance in North America, so it has FDA grass.
It's a low calorie sweetener, rare sugar with 1.5 kilocalories.
It has very low glycemic index, so very healthy solution, and it has prebiotic certificate certificate, which actually finds a lot of interest among our customers and we hope that we can enable Tagaols being implemented, globally as we said already.
So, given, It a way to life again and thank you life for completing the presentation.
Yeah, thanks a lot again, Natalia.
Before we move to the Q&A session, I would like to quickly summarize, what we discussed today.
So, first we saw that there's a growing market for sugar reduction solutions.
The growing health awareness across the world leads to a growing need for products that combine great taste and low sugar.
But at the same time, we see changing consumer expectations because not only sugar is under scrutiny anymore, but also sweeteners, and here especially artificial sweeteners are questioned regarding a potential impact on consumer health.
And to address these changes, the focus is shifting towards healthier and natural solutions, and we developed a roadmap at Sunrise for futureproof sugar reduction tools within a broad portfolio.
In addition to our Sim taste balancing solutions, we are working on several projects to explore these opportunities.
For example, when working with rare sugars or sweet proteins.
And to bring this strategy to life, we entered specific partnerships to deeper explore these opportunities.
One example is the partnership with Onomos on the rare sugar tagatos with the objective to develop tailored taste balancing solutions.
OK, that was our presentation on the Sunrise roadmap, in the context of sugar reduction.
So thank you very much again for joining and listening, and we are now happy to have a look into your questions.
Thanks.
Alright, thanks for the interesting presentation.
We'll now begin with the Q&A.
I'll begin with some questions from the audience.
So the first question is for you, Natalia.
Are you planning on entering the sweet protein market?
Oh, thank you for the question.
Sweet proteins actually are not new to the market.
I would give you the example of Talmatine.
Talmatine has been allowed as a food additive in the EU for a while, I would say for the last 30 years at least, and as a flavor modifier in the US.
We know that with the development of biotech, mostly precision fermentation, but , as cultivation of genetically modified plants, we are seeing new qualities of thalmatine, brasil, monoline, as as novel designer proteins.
And some of them already having FEMA and FDA approvals as Brazil.
And yes, we are evaluating those qualities and exploring opportunities related to them, both as FMPs, but we also evaluate them as sweeteners to combine our Existing taste balancing solutions with emerging new sweeteners.
So I would say yes, sweet proteins is an interesting area for sea rise to evaluate and explore.
Brilliant.
The second question is also for you.
Are the materials natural or nature identical or artificial?
And how do they work to mask undesired tastes?
Then I have to say, A little bit historically, from the very beginning in early 2000s, Simra's focus on taste balancing was on natural flavoring substances and flavoring preparations.
So 99% of our portfolio would be natural flavors.
We do not put a lot of focus on natural identical and artificial, substances in our portfolio because we believe that natural is the future and natural what is our customers and consumers are looking for.
And as for the second part, masking, I would say it's the same, the same applicable to masking.
Yes, we do have in our portfolio masking, substances and masking flavors.
And that's a big part of our portfolio and all of them are also natural.
Lin, next question is for you life.
Do you see a connection between sugar reduction and GLP1 drugs?
Mm, yeah, thank you.
That's a very good question and might, might take some time to answer.
So, at the moment, discussions about GLP1 injections, are everywhere because they revolutionize how people manage their weight.
So as most of you know, they support insatiety management and make you feel, fuller and having less hunger when taking these drugs.
And this leads to specific needs you have when using GLP1 drugs.
For example, we often talk about the need for hydration because you don't only hydrate when drinking, but also when eating.
When you eat less, this might lead to a problem with your hydration.
And it's the same for nutrients like vitamins and fibers, so when people eat less, because they are on GLP1 drugs, they might have problems to eat the right amount of nutrients.
So we see a huge potential for functional food and beverages here.
And here, we also see a link to sugar reduction.
People on GLP1 in many cases try to reduce their sugar intake, due to different reasons.
On the one hand, they should rather try to consume products that are high in nutrients instead of, let's say, filling their calories with, sugar.
And on the other hand, many GLP1 consumers develop a changed mindset.
They are simply more cautious when choosing food and beverages and actively look for healthier products like sugar-re reduced food and drinks.
So, in summary, yes, in the consumer research we did, we definitely saw the need for reduced calorie and sugar intake for consumers on GLP1 drugs.
Brilliant.
Our next question is for you, Natalia, again.
How can we access your tager toast and taste balancing solutions?
Thank you for the question.
Actually, I have already mentioned that, currently the, the focus of Symrise Bonamo's partnership, is the US market.
It is driven by legal approvals.
So Tagatos from Bonamos has FDA grass approval in the US, but in the EU, the amendment of authorization as novel food, and you probably know that Tagatos is allowed as novel food in the European Union.
But Bonamos Tagatos still has to undergo the amendment to get authorization, through EFSA, and this is still running.
So, to answer your question, how you can access, those comass, please, Come to our, US, Symrise US colleagues, which can help you to get access either to FMPs from Symrise or to Tagatos as a sweetener, which would be offered by our distribution partners.
OK, great, next one is for you again.
This is on biotech derived taste modulators.
GMM and naturalness, how do you see the impact on legislation?
Mm, not an easy question.
Thank you for that.
Indeed, biotech derived taste modulators.
Have been challenged by EU committee.
To be labeled as natural because they are produced with the help of, Genetically modified organisms.
And that provoked many discussions in the flavor industry.
European Flavor Association, EFFA is actually defending the opinion that the ingredients produced with GMM should keep natural status because GMM is being completely removed and there are no traces left in the ingredient after reaction.
As a result, EU Commission put this challenge on hold for the moment, so I would say for now, there is no concern and the natural status of Flavors produced with GMM is.
Staying unchanged, so that's natural.
Great.
Then this final question is for you life.
Are you also active in salt and fat reduction?
Yeah, thank you very much.
The short answer is yes.
So today we obviously focused on, on sugar reduction, our roadmap here.
But in the presentation, I also showed, the Sim Life taste balancing wheel showing, different areas where we are active in.
And there are also salt reduction, for example, was mentioned, and, and mouthy was mentioned which is very important in, in fat reduction.
So, we are also active in these areas, also umami, building umami was one part of the wheel, which is, which is imported in culinary products when reducing salt, so.
These are important factors when talking about salt and fat reduction, so it's part of our taste balancing, toolbox.
So yes, we have solutions for these challenges, across different food and beverage categories.
And the principles how these solutions work are quite similar to what we presented in the context of sugar reduction.
Of course, you need to consider other very different taste dynamics, but again, we use our taste balancing toolbox to optimize the optimize the overall taste profiles in these cases.
And, yeah, as mentioned in the presentation, I'm happy to connect with you, after the session.
To talk about your specific needs to see what kind of solutions might be suitable.
Great.
Unfortunately that's all we've got time for today.
Thanks to all our listeners for all of the questions today and thanks again to Life and Natalia.
All the questions we didn't have time to answer today will be answered via email.
You can also check your inbox for an on-demand version of the webinar, which will be sent out shortly.
Finally, you can keep up with the latest developments in industry news at food ingredientsfirst.com, where you can also sign up for our newsletters.
Thank you.
Global Marketing Manager Food Beverage
Editor
Global Sugar Reduction Platform Director
Leif Jago
Global Marketing Manager Food Beverage
Louis Gore Langton
Editor
Natalia Khashkovskaya
Global Sugar Reduction Platform Director
