3-5 December 2019 Paris, France
Solutions for natural and clean label sugar reduction
Contents Solutions for natural and clean label sugar reduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Refined sugars out, ‘natural’ sugars in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Lower calorie options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 High intensity sweeteners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Challenges for monk fruit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Stevia still leads in natural sweeteners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 New and improved stevia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Sweetness without sweeteners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
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Solutions for natural and clean label sugar reduction Food and beverage companies around the world remain under pressure to cut sugar as regulators aim to reduce obesity and associated health problems, like type 2 diabetes and heart disease. A handful of countries have implemented sugar taxes, while others have put in place industry targets for sugar reduction. Meanwhile, global consumers increasingly are cutting down on sugar of their own volition, and they are looking for natural alternatives. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends cutting added sugar to less than 10% of total calories, and better still, to less than 5% for improved health – that’s about 25 grams or six teaspoons a day for a 2,000-calorie daily diet1. However, only 10 countries in the world have per capita sugar consumption at or below this level, according to Euromonitor figures2, including China, at 15.7 grams, Israel (14.5 grams) and India (5.1 grams), and only 23 countries are below 50 grams per day. The United States consumes the most sugar per capita at 126 grams a day, followed by Germany and The Netherlands at about 103 grams. Many consumers worldwide are paying attention to the sugar reduction message. According to a survey conducted by DSM in 20173, 55% of global consumers said they always checked product labels for sugar content. At the same time, consumers have become more sceptical of artificial sweeteners, and half of the 8,000 people surveyed said they would pay more for products that used “only natural sweeteners”. All this adds up to a food and beverage industry that is more motivated than ever to find natural alternatives to sugar. Alongside sugar reduction, the number of products globally making a “no artificial sweeteners” claim has been on a general upward trend too. In 2013, 1,901 new food and drink launches carried the claim, and this rose 17% to 2,297 new launches in 2017, according to Mintel data. Beverages account for more than a third of these products, but the fastest growing categories include sauces and seasonings, dairy, baby food, and breakfast cereals.
Product launches with “no artificial sweeteners”
Foods and drinks with “no artificial ingredients” 6.000
2.500
5.000
2.000
4.000
1.500
3.000
1.000
2.000
500
1.000 0
2013
2014
Source: Mintel GNPD 2018
2015
2016
2017
0
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
Date Published
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But reducing sugar in foods and drinks is not as simple as substituting sugar with another ingredient. Changing the flavour of a well-loved product rarely goes down well, as Coca-Cola subsidiary Glacéau discovered in 2014 when it switched some of the sugar in Vitaminwater for stevia in an effort to make the brand appear more natural. Consumer backlash quickly led the company to go back to its original formula. However, another Coca-Cola brand, Sprite, has been much more successful with its stevia-sugar blend, cutting calories by 30% and entirely replacing full-calorie Sprite in several markets, including France, Ireland, the UK, The Netherlands and Australia. The world’s biggest food manufacturer, Nestlé, uses a range of strategies to reduce sugar including reducing portion sizes, replacing sugar with other ingredients and cutting sugar gradually over time. The company’s researchers have also developed a hollow sugar crystal that dissolves more quickly on the tongue than ordinary sugar, allowing the same sweet taste with fewer calories. According to a Nestlé spokesperson there is a strong focus on natural approaches.
“The clear consumer trend is towards natural, organic, authentic ingredients, and we are reflecting this in our reformulation efforts.”
“Our structured sugar for example allows us to reduce sugar significantly with great taste and texture, using only natural ingredients… The first product – Milkybar Wowsomes – is on shelves with a 30% sugar reduction versus comparable bars. We are planning to apply the same innovation to further children’s chocolate brands and are looking seriously at further applications.”
Apart from taste, switching out sugar brings a raft of other challenges because sugar contributes much more than sweetness to a finished product. It has a range of functional properties, including extending shelf life, and adding bulk, browning, structure development and texture. In ice cream, for example, sugar plays a role in how it freezes, making it smoother and creamier.
Refined sugars out, ‘natural’ sugars in These challenges lead some manufacturers to choose alternative caloric sweeteners that retain much of the functionality of sugar while also benefiting from consumer perception that they are healthier or more natural than ordinary refined sugar, such as honey, agave syrup, fruit juice concentrates, coconut sugar or brown rice syrup.
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However, all these ingredients still contribute to tooth decay and count as added sugars from a nutritional and a labelling perspective. Although some sweeteners, like honey and agave syrup, have a lower glycaemic index than ordinary sugar – meaning they bring about a slower increase in blood glucose – diabetics still need to treat them in the same way as other sugars, according to specialist advice from organisations including Diabetes UK4 and Diabetes Ireland5. In addition, although they are often touted as more nutritious than sugar, their trace mineral content is so low that they cannot be considered a nutrient source; honey, for example, contains just 11 mg of potassium per tablespoon while the daily requirement is 3,500 mg. Nevertheless, this has not stood in the way of positive consumer perception, and many food and drink companies are leveraging the ‘natural’ halo of such sweeteners as they look for ways to avoid ordinary sugar.
Lower calorie options Lower calorie sweeteners are divided into two main categories: bulk and high intensity. Bulk sweeteners are used in similar quantities to sugar, and tend to be slightly less sweet. Natural options in this category include sugar alcohols, such as xylitol, maltitol, erythritol, sorbitol and isomalt. These come from plant products and fruits and are made by changing carbohydrates through processes such as fermentation and catalytic hydrogenation – whether they qualify as ‘natural’ depends on interpretation of the word as well as the production process. Each polyol has particular attributes that steer its use toward certain applications. Erythritol, for example, gives a strong cooling sensation, meaning that it matches well with mint and menthol flavours, while maltitol and isomalt are more hydrophobic, making them good choices for boiled sweets and hard coatings. Xylitol has the added benefit of health claims associated with prevention of dental caries, which are widely used for sugar-free chewing gum. Differences in sweetness onset and intensity also mean polyols are commonly blended together. Manufacturers looking for natural sweeteners have often blended erythritol with stevia, for example, because of their synergistic effect on flavour – erythritol balances the lingering sweetness of stevia. Erythritol is also often found in blends because it does not have the laxative effect of some polyols, such as xylitol, so it can help mitigate that effect.
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Besides polyols, allulose has also emerged as a potential sugar alternative, containing 90% fewer calories than sugar but 70% of the sweetness. Allulose is a rare sugar that exists in very small quantities in nature, including in fruits like figs and raisins as well as in molasses and maple syrup. It is not approved for use in the European Union but was granted GRAS (generally recognized as safe) status by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2014. This has meant more international food and drink companies are willing to use allulose in their products. Tate & Lyle has emerged as a leading supplier of allulose since launching the sweetener under its Dolcia Prima brand in 2015. Early in 2018, it worked with TungLok, a leading Asian foodservice group, to help cut 25% of the sugar in its Nian Gao cakes, which are traditionally enjoyed as part of Chinese New Year celebrations. However, use of allulose is still very low. Globally, just nine new product launches contained the sweetener in 2016 and the same number again in 2017, according to Mintel, while 11 new products with allulose were launched in the first half of 2018.
High intensity sweeteners Stevia and monk fruit have emerged as frontrunners in the natural high intensity sweeteners space, but companies are still looking for alternatives. Other sweet compounds have been extracted from several West African plants and fruits, including brazzein, miraculin, monellin and thaumatin. Miraculin is not sweet in itself but binds to sweet taste receptors on the tongue so sour-tasting foods are perceived as sweet, and monellin works well with bulk sweeteners to reduce persistent sweetness. Thaumatin can be used as a low-calorie sweetener, but its sweetness is very slow-building and lingering, so it is usually used for flavour modification, rather than as a standalone sweetener. Brazzein has a more sugar-like sweetness than thaumatin and can offset stevia’s aftertaste. In May 2017, UK-headquartered Magellan Life Sciences claimed to have developed a way to scale up brazzein production and simplify processing, potentially opening the way for future commercialisation6. However, these ingredients come with restrictions. Some are too costly to grow and extract at scale, and even if brazzein and others clear this hurdle, they still will need to surmount some formidable regulatory stumbling blocks. In addition, brazzein, monellin and miraculin are not heat stable, meaning they can’t be used in many processed foods, and monellin and miraculin are pH-dependent, meaning they lose their sweetness in certain products.
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Challenges for monk fruit David Thorrold, General Manager at Monk Fruit Corp., the world’s largest monk fruit supplier, says new sweetening options are likely to be limited because of these barriers – even though companies like Coca-Cola are actively looking for new natural sweeteners.
“Given the enormous amount of bio-prospecting that has taken place in the last 20 years, and the quite large number of compounds that have shown promise but eventually been discounted, I do not believe we will see any new natural sweeteners that are extracted directly from the plant.” Instead, he suggests companies increasingly will produce nature-identical molecules through a range of methods, particularly for steviol glycosides, the sweet components in the stevia leaf.
“However a synthesised molecule, even if it is found in nature, is not going to be considered “natural” by most consumers or by most food and beverage companies.” Thorrold said, warning that a proliferation of nature-identical sweeteners could damage consumer perception of stevia as a truly natural plant-derived sweetener.
“This is one of the reasons we are not interested in pursuing synthetic manufacture of mogrosides [monk fruit’s sweet components] or other sweetener molecules.” Sweeteners from monk fruit are the latest to enter the mainstream, but they are still not approved in some major markets, including Europe and Japan. For monk fruit extract as a sweetener, Monk Fruit Corp. has no plans to apply for EU approval, Thorrold says, although the company hopes to have its monk fruit juice concentrate approved as food in the EU by the end of 2018. Meanwhile, an application from Guilin Layn Natural Ingredients to assess its monk fruit sweetener has stalled after the European Food Safety Authority asked for additional data.
Stevia still leads in natural sweeteners Not least because of its wider regulatory approval, stevia remains the clear leader in natural zero-calorie sweetening options – and its popularity among formulators continues to grow. The number of annual product launches containing stevia has increased more than ten-fold over the past decade, according to Mintel, outpacing new monk fruit launches by more than 15 to one.
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Global Stevia product launches 3.000 2.500 2.000 1.500 1.000 500 0 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
Date Published
Source: Mintel GNPD 2018
There are other good reasons for stevia’s success, including a crop that is easy to cultivate with multiple harvests in a year, heat- and pH-stability, and a lower price point than other natural zero-calorie sweeteners. Sweeteners from monk fruit, for example, cost at least three times as much. Still, the annual number of new product launches containing monk fruit has risen 77% over the past five years and the sweetener is said to have a more sugar-like taste profile than stevia. Thorrold claims part of its appeal is that it comes from fruit, particularly for premium brands, and its low use level means its higher cost is still relatively small per serving.
Global Monk fruit product launches 180 160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
Date Published
Source: Mintel GNPD 2018
“Formulators are also working with blends of stevia and monk fruit which mitigates some of the taste issues with stevia while giving a lower cost in use for the sweetener system than if just monk fruit was used.�
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New and improved stevia To improve stevia’s taste profile, major supplier PureCircle has cultivated a non-GMO stevia variety called Starleaf, which contains 20 times more of the most sugar-like compounds Reb D and Reb M. PureCircle CEO Magomet Malsagov said:
“In addition to extracting Reb D and Reb M from Starleaf plants, PureCircle can also produce Reb D and Reb M in much greater scale, directly using the more abundant Reb A in the production process. The Reb D and Reb M produced from the two processes are from the stevia leaf and are identical in great taste.” Coca-Cola recently launched its first Coca-Cola sweetened only with stevia, and says it intends to phase out Coke Life in New Zealand, which contains a blend of stevia and sugar. It says it is using specialty stevia extracts for a more sugar-like taste – but even if the new Coca-Cola No Sugar Stevia product sells well in New Zealand, its relatively small population of about 4.5 million is a safe size for a sweetener that is still only produced on a relatively small scale. Malsagov says PureCircle is “massively ramping up” Starleaf stevia planting in 2018. But for now, supply of these compounds falls well short of what major manufacturers would require to switch to 100% steviasweetened products in all global markets without compromising on taste. According to Euromonitor analyst John George,
“There will be further refinement of stevia with the goal of providing a sweetener that enables 100% sugar replacement, tastes good and is natural. This will see new manufacturing methods such as fermentation increase in prominence.” He added that future development in sweeteners is likely to focus almost entirely on natural options that can emulate stevia’s success.
Sweetness without sweeteners Apart from sweeteners, food companies are using a range of other natural approaches to cut sugar. Colorado firm MycoTechnology targets the bitter flavours associated with sweeteners like stevia and monk fruit with fungal strains that consume molecules associated with bitterness. The fermentation technology could lead to better tasting natural sweeteners without the need for masking ingredients.
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In dairy products, manipulating the lactose can enhance sweetness without using any additional sugar or sweeteners. Used for decades to make lactose-free dairy products, enzyme companies are now promoting lactase for its ability to break lactose into glucose and galactose, thereby increasing its sweetness and allowing for a 20-50% sugar reduction. For other applications, such as chocolate and confectionery, another enzymatic approach is to use invertase to break down sucrose into glucose and fructose. It works on much the same principle as lactase: splitting sugar into its individual monosaccharides enhances sweetness without increasing calories. According to analysts at Leatherhead Food Research, some manufacturers are looking at how flavours associated with sweetness – such as vanilla and strawberry esters – can be used to boost the perception of sweetness even though they do not provide sweetness in themselves. The concept works because taste perception in the mouth interacts with the smell of food and drink at the back of the nose. The retronasal “sweet” smell of foods and flavours enhances the sweet taste that is first perceived in the mouth7. The perception of sweetness may be influenced by other senses too. Research led by neuroscientist Professor Charles Spence at the University of Oxford suggests that rounder shapes make products taste sweeter, while more angular shapes enhance bitterness. He says this may explain why Cadbury was flooded with complaints when it changed the shape of its Dairy Milk chocolate bars in 2012. Consumers thought the company had altered the recipe, but actually, the curvier shape had changed the way they perceived its flavour. Spence and his colleagues in one such study8 wrote:
“One could imagine using shape symbolism in order to enhance sweetness or saltiness, say, when the actual formulation of various popular brands has been modified in order to meet the latest health targets.” Other research led by Spence has suggested that orange and red colours may boost perception of sweetness, while colour contrast, and the weight and colour of food packaging may affect how people perceive flavour intensity, creaminess and quality9,10. What is clear is that food and drink companies have many natural and low-calorie avenues to explore when it comes to sugar reduction, whether they focus on sweeteners, other ingredients, or more novel approaches to sweetness.
The information provided here was compiled with due care and up to date to the best of our knowledge on publication.
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Sources http://www.who.int/nutrition/publications/guidelines/sugars_intake/en/ https://blog.euromonitor.com/2015/10/global-nutrition-overview-sugar.html 3 https://www.dsm.com/corporate/media/informationcenter-news/2017/10/2017-10-16-dsm-insight-seriessugar-concern-on-the-rise-with-47-percent-of-consumers-more-concerned-about-sugar-consumptionthan-3-years-ago.html 4 https://www.diabetes.org.uk/guide-to-diabetes/enjoy-food/carbohydrates-and-diabetes/how-to-cutdown-on-sugar 5 https://www.diabetes.ie/what-are-free-sugars/ 6 http://magellanlifesciences.com/in-the-press/press-releases 7 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118971758.ch45 8 https://flavourjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/2044-7248-1-12 9 https://flavourjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13411-015-0033-1 10 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867415002603 1 2
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