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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Mars Announces Startups for Inaugural Seeds of Change Food Accelerator

This morning, CPG giant Mars unveiled the six startups participating in the company’s first-ever cohort for its Seeds of Change accelerator program, which helps early-stage companies with health- and sustainability-focused offerings hit their next phase of growth.

As a consumer-focused brand, Seeds of Change has been in operation since 1989, initially selling organic seeds to farmers and gardeners before launching a food line in the late 1990s.

The new accelerator program, which was announced in March of this year, is an extension of the brand’s focus on health and sustainability.

Participants were selected this past weekend, when 10 finalists from the application pool headed to Chicago and presented their companies and ideas to a panel of judges. Each will receive a grant of $50,000 and participate in a four-month-long program that includes curriculum and mentorship sessions designed to help startups scale up their operations.

For this first cohort, the program looks to be focused mainly on ingredient innovation:

Fora produces non-dairy butter and is on track to release other yet-to-be-named plant-based dairy alternatives.
Prommus makes a protein-enhanced hummus, and also runs a program that provides meals to school children in food-insecure parts of the world
Brooklyn Delhi makes India-inspired condiments and sauces.
Tru Made Foods turns condiments like BBQ sauce and Sriracha into superfoods by replacing sugar with vegetables
NoBull Burger makes plant-based burgers.
Oxtale sells starter packs that let consumers cook traditional Asian meals in under 30 minutes.

The six companies chosen over the weekend were selected for Seeds of Change’s U.S.-based program. The company also runs an Australia-based version of the accelerator, for which applications just closed.

Mars, at this point, is better known for candy and pet foods than it is for sustainable eating. But like a growing number of major CPGs out there, the company is looking to double-down on food innovation by partnering with younger, leaner companies, and also align more with the growing consumer demand for things like health, transparency, and sustainability. Dairy Farmers of America, who works with some of the world’s largest food producers, has a new(ish) accelerator program that’s been getting attention as of late, and numerous other CPGs, from Kraft-Heinz to Nestle to BSH run programs.

McDonalds in Israel to Start Selling Nestlé’s Meatless Incredible Burger

Back in April McDonald’s in Germany began selling the Big Vegan TS, a plant-based burger made with Nestlé’s Incredible patty. In his piece on the news, author Chris asked: “will Nestlé be able to replicate this type of McDonald’s deal quickly and establish a stronghold in Europe before Beyond and Impossible can make a meaningful leap across the Atlantic?”

It’s looking more and more like the answer will be yes. Yesterday the Israeli publication Globes reported that McDonald’s Israel will start selling its own meatless burger featuring Nestlé’s Incredible patties. Called the Big Vegan, it will start off as a pilot in several locations in Tel Aviv in roughly six weeks. Pricing has not yet been revealed.

Switzerland-based Nestlé seems to be doing very well establishing itself in fast-food restaurants in Europe. What’s not as clear is if it will be able to break into the same market across the Atlantic. Nestlé is launching its plant-based Awesome burger in retail under its Sweet Earth brand this fall. Will there be an Awesome Big Mac in our future?

Probably not anytime soon. The U.S. contingent of its current fast food partner, McDonald’s, isn’t quite sold on plant-based meat yet. At its annual shareholder meeting last month, McDonald’s global chief marketing officer and menu director Silvia Lagnado said that the company was monitoring meat alternative options but didn’t yet have any plans to announce. “We obviously have to assess whether consumer demand [would be at a] level we believe would be sustained,” she said.

The consumer demand is certainly there right now. Chains like Del Taco, Burger King, and White Castle have all seen a spike in foot traffic after introducing products featuring plant-based meat from Impossible Foods or Beyond Meat.

At the same time, McDonald’s is selling more regular burgers than ever. Last year the fast-food chain decided to switch from frozen to fresh beef, and reportedly sold 40 million more quarter pounders in the U.S. in Q1 than it did a year ago. Maybe McDonald’s is thinking if it ain’t broke, why make it meatless?

Nonetheless, the buzzing popularity of plant-based meat is getting harder and harder to ignore. More and more fast-food chains — from Qdoba to Carl’s Jr. — are embracing meat alternatives. Eventually I’m betting that the pressure to introduce vegan options will become so great that McDonald’s will give in and put a plant-based burger on its menu. The real question is whether it will be from Nestlé or another alt-meat player.

McDonald’s (in Germany) Goes with Nestlé’s Incredible Burger for Vegan Option

When we write about fast food joints adding a plant-based burger option to its menu, it’s usually an Impossible or Beyond Meat plant-based patty. So it caught our eye when LiveKindly reported today that McDonald’s in Germany is making Nestlé’s Incredible Burger patty the center of its new Big Vegan TS.

The Incredible Burger, which in no way sounds like a knock-off of the Impossible burger, is Nestle’s take on a plant-based burger that looks and acts like traditional meat. On the surface, McDonald’s auf Deutsch’s move may seem like a snub of Impossible and Beyond, but it actually make sense and is something my co-worker, Catherine Lamb kinda saw coming back in December, when she wrote:

Impossible and Beyond may have a hold on the U.S. market, but they haven’t expanded much outside of the U.S. (yet). Nestlé would be smart to concentrate on the European market, where, despite several competitors like Moving Mountains and Naturli’ Foods, there’s still plenty of room for it to carve out its own space in the plant-based meat market. Given Nestlé’s size, it already has scale, manufacturing, and sales channels it can leverage to expand quickly.

So it’s understandable that the German McDonald’s would opt for the burger from neighboring Swiss company Nestlé. The question becomes: will Nestlé be able to replicate this type of McDonald’s deal quickly and establish a stronghold in Europe before Beyond and Impossible can make a meaningful leap across the Atlantic?

The McDonald’s news comes ahead of the impending Beyond Meat IPO, which could put added pressure on the company. Investors like to see growth, and getting boxed out of Europe before it’s even begun could be bad news. The bright side, however, is that Beyond announced today that it is going to be available in Belgium, and should Beyond’s IPO go well, it will have the warchest to fuel growth more aggressively into new markets.

The Big Vegan will be available in Germany starting April 29th. If you’re a German Spoon reader, let us know how it is!

Nestlé is the Latest CPG Company to Launch a Food & Beverage Accelerator

Nestlé is the latest mega food company to get in on the food & beverage accelerator movement.

Today the Swiss company announced that it was launching an R&D accelerator program in Lausanne, Switzerland. This is the first internal accelerator for Nestlé, who previously partnered with Rabobank and Rocketspace to create the Terra Food + Agtech Accelerator program in 2017.

In the press release, Nestlé was pretty vague on the details. We don’t know what type of startups or individuals they’re targeting, how many have been accepted, or how often the cohorts will cycle through. The release lists “Nestlé scientists, students, and start-ups,” so presumably it will be a pretty diverse mixture of participants.

However, we do know a few key things about the program. Accepted individuals and groups will get access to Nestlé’s R&D labs, kitchens, equipment, and expertise, as well as some office space. The accelerator will kick off before the end of 2019.

Nestlé joins an ever-growing group of big CPG companies who are launching accelerators to sniff out new, trendy brands. Chobani, General Mills, Kraft-Heinz, and Pepsi-Co are just a few that have done so over the past year. It’s a smart move: accelerators are a relatively low-touch way to give corporations access to agile, innovative companies, which they can either acquire or partner with for image, product and marketing purposes.

My colleague, Jenn Marston, predicted we’d see even more of these programs from Big Food in 2019. It seems like she was right.

Food Tech News: Nestlé’s ‘Awesome’ Plant-Based Burger, Maine Might Ban Styrofoam Food Containers

Happy Saturday! Kick off your weekend with a quick recap of some of our favorite food tech news stories this week, from a new plant-based “Awesome” burger to expansion plans for healthy vending machines.

Nestlé prepares to roll out Incredible burger + announces Awesome burger
Mega food company Nestlé announced a new cook-from-raw plant-based burger — called the Incredible burger — in December. This week the Swiss company gave more details about its release. The burger will launch in Europe starting this month in retail stores’ chilled and frozen sections.

Nestlé also announced that it will roll out another cook-from-raw plant-based burger in the U.S. this fall under the Sweet Earth brand. It will be called the Awesome Burger (who is coming up with these names?) and is clearly meant to compete with Beyond and Impossible burgers, the latter which is headed to retail sometime this year.

 

Two new states pass meat labeling legislation
Nestlé may be trying to cash in on the plant-based meat craze, but some states are starting to push back on what can and cannot be called “meat.” This week Mississippi and South Dakota passed legislation that will prohibit products not made from slaughtered animals from bearing the label “meat” (h/t Food Safety News). Montana will follow suit with a similar law once it’s signed by the state’s governor.

Missouri signed a similar bill into law last year and was promptly taken to court by a coalition including the ACLU and Tofurky. There’s no word yet if the same group will also take legal action against Mississippi, South Dakota, or Montana.

 

Photo by Rhys A via Flickr.

Maine might ban foam food & beverage containers
This week the Maine House voted to prohibit all businesses from using polystyrene food and beverage containers. According to the Press Herald, if the bill is enacted it will make Maine one of the first states to ban single-use containers made from Styrofoam. This could massively cut down on landfill waste: while some polystyrene goods are recyclable, there are currently no recycling programs operating in Vacationland.

 

Photo: Farmers Fridge

Farmer’s Fridge expands from Chicago to Indianapolis
Chicago-based Farmer’s Fridge, the startup which makes vending machines that dispense healthy meals like grain bowls and salads, is expanding to Indianapolis. According to the Indianapolis Business Journal, it will roll out 18 machines in the new city by the end of this month. Farmer’s Fridge raised $30 million in September of last year and currently has 250 fridges operating throughout Chicago and Milwaukee.

Did we miss anything? Tweet tips out to us @TheSpoonTech!

Pepsi and Nestlé to Trial Reusable Containers in Effort to Ditch Plastic

This summer, a group of 25 big name brands including Pepsi, Nestlé and Procter & Gamble will test out a new program that sells products in reusable containers in an effort to combat rampant plastic waste, reports The Wall Street Journal.

The new program, dubbed Loop, will be run by recycling company, TerraCycle, and will kick off in May, starting with 5,000 shoppers in New York and Paris. From there it will branch out to more locations like London, Toronto and Tokyo over the next year.

Some examples of the new packaging include Pepsi selling Tropicana orange juice in glass bottles, and Häagen-Dazs putting its ice cream in steel containers. The Journal writes that prices for these products will be roughly the same as their plastic counterparts, but there will be a deposit of $1 – $10 per container (plus shipping). Shoppers order items through a website for home delivery and when they are done, schedule a pickup for the containers which will be cleaned and reused.

It’s always good to be skeptical of big brands whenever they appear to be making some kind of altruistic move–they are in business to make money, not save the planet. But this trial is coming at a time when people are waking up to just how much plastic waste we’re generating. National Geographic reports that 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic has been created over the past six decades and only 9 percent of it has been recycled. It gets worse, as U.S. plastic recycling was projected to decrease to just 4.4 percent last year.

The good news, though, is that a number of regulators, companies and startups are tackling the problem head on. Last year more than 60 countries introduced initiatives to ban single-use plastic. Companies like Starbucks and Disney and Hyatt are banning single use plastic straws. Vessel Works launched a reusable coffee cup program in Colorado. And zero waste grocery stores are starting to pop up.

Will all this activity move the needle for convenience-addicted shoppers (myself included) to ditch their old habits and try something new? The ease of buying the normal plastic containers will be a hard habit for a lot of people to break. Hopefully Pepsi, Nestlé and all the brands participating in this new trial will design a recycling program that works, stick with it and throw some of their considerable marketing muscle behind it to make it a success — and help make us move on from plastic.

Do Consumers Trust Big Food to Make Their Plant-Based Meat? Does It Matter?

When we released our story about Nestlé launching a meat-like, meatless patty dubbed the “Incredible Burger” last week, it sparked some… backlash from our audience. (To be clear: We welcome comments!) Here are a few examples:

https://twitter.com/rebarrett/status/1079005375674834946

Basically, some readers were skeptical that they could trust Nestlé — which, like most Big Food companies, has a less-than-perfect reputation — to make plant-based food sustainably. These reactions made us at the Spoon wonder: as an eating trend (like plant-based food) goes mainstream, will consumers buy products regardless of the company that makes them?

At first, maybe not so much. During a conversation about the evolving plant-based meat market, The Spoon founder Mike Wolf speculated that earlier in the adoption curve people tend to be more value-driven, seeking out certain products motivated by the ethics of the manufacturing process, the sustainability quotient, or the reputation of the parent company. Early adopters often put more value in the ethics and mission of a product, like how Impossible Foods is out to save the planet by reducing meat consumption.

As Big Food companies like Nestlé concentrate on the meat alternatives space, early adopters might be skeptical of their motives and, therefore, their products. However, as you get to what Wolf calls “the Costco consumer” — one who’s more driven by more by price value than by, well, values — the company behind the product might not mean quite as much. These mainstream consumers aren’t buying the product to make a values statement: rather, they’re selecting it because of its reduced cost, good taste, or maybe even branding. In general, they won’t boycott a product because they don’t like the ethics of the company who makes it.

This sort of apathetic consumerism might grate with the more woke shoppers. But in a weird way, it shouldn’t. Young startups are all well and good, and have been doing a great job drumming up consumer interest in meat-like meat alternatives. However, if plant-based (and, down the road, cell-based) meat has a prayer of actually disrupting the industrial meat industry, Big Food pretty much needs to be involved.

Of course, how they get involved is important, too — in no way should Big Food companies get carte blanche. They shouldn’t use their sizeable market muscles to force out startups who are on a mission, or stifle new companies. Environmental concerns are also top of mind: plants may be more sustainable than meat, but Nestlé still has to be conscious the makings its ingredients, manufacturing processes, and packaging as sustainable as possible.

Tyson Foods has a 5 percent stake in Beyond Meat. (Photo: Beyond Meat.)

All this to say, some people — especially early adopters — might not like how Big Food companies entering the meat-like meat alternatives market with their Incredible burgers and vegan hot dogs. That’s perfectly alright. These objectors don’t have to get their plant-based protein from major CPG companies; there are plenty of other delicious options which, at least from the outside, seem to have the ethical upper hand.

But giant CPG companies like Nestlé have the manufacturing power, global reach, and distribution channels that can help plant-based meat go from (relatively) niche product to mainstream food staple: one that costs the same as or less than conventional meat. In order for alterna-meats to really catch on, they have to be within reach for the “Costco consumer.” And that pretty much inevitably means working with Big Food — even Nestlé.

Do you agree? Is getting Big Food involved the only way that meat alternatives can go mainstream? Sound off in the comments or on Twitter @TheSpoonTech! 

Newsletter: The Road to CES and Plant-Based Meat Mania

Happy Friday,

It’s all hands on deck here at the Spoon as we prepare for CES. Our comfortable walking shoes are packed, our schedules are taking shape, and our Criss Angel Mindfreak tickets are booked (just kidding on that last one (maybe)).

We’ll be exploring the cavernous show floors all week long, sniffing out stories about new food tech products and smart kitchen appliances — and taking videos along the way. Make sure to check in on the site and on social to see our latest finds. If you’ll be there with a company of your own, feel free to pitch us!

But before we jet off to Vegas, here are a few of the biggest stories we wrote about this week:

Nestlé is tossing its hat into the meat alternatives ring with an offering called the Incredible Burger. (If you think that sounds a lot like the Impossible Burger, you are right!) In the piece I wrote that I was optimistic that Nestlé’s new burger will be successful, mostly because there’s such demand for plant-based meat that it isn’t a zero-sum game: there are room for all sorts of colorfully-named meatless burgers, chicken nuggets, sausages, etc.

After we published the post, however, we began to see some pushback on social media from readers who were skeptical about Nestlé’s choice, and thought that the Big Food company had much baggage to ethically make plant-based meats. Maybe they’re right, maybe they’re wrong (look out for a more in-depth post on this debate on Sunday), but regardless it brings up an interesting point about the implications of Big Food cashing in on new eating trends, e.g. plant-based foods.

Photo: Beyond Meat.

Speaking of plant-based foods, is anyone trying out Veganuary? This year record amounts of consumers are going veg for the month (and beyond), and the U.K. is cashing in big time with a myriad of plant-based offerings in major grocery chains and fast-food joints. Even Pizza Hut has a vegan, BBQ jackfruit-topped pie.

Here in the U.S. we may be a little bit behind the eight ball when it comes to plant-based options, especially in the fast food realm, but a few players, namely Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, are working hard to catch us up. Beyond Meat just launched on the menu at Carl’s Jr. and Impossible Foods, which is already at White Castle, has hinted that it’ll be dropping some news on January 7th at CES — check back here, we’ll be bringing you the business.

In other news this week, Chris got the scoop on AirSpace Link, a startup which came out of stealth this week and launched a registry that allows people to opt in or out of drone delivery. (Drone delivery may still be a ways away — but autonomous vehicle delivery isn’t!) Mike shared his 2019 smart kitchen predictions, from food-driven revenue models to the emergence sentient kitchen. Finally, Jenn wrote about a research group at Princeton University working to provide an open-source model for vertical farming.

If you’re looking for something to listen to this weekend, check out the latest episode of the Smart Kitchen Show. It’s another editor roundtable where the Spoon writers talk about their predictions for 2019 and what they’re looking forward to at CES. You can also get it on Apple podcasts, Stitcher and Soundcloud!

And finally, we have a job board! We’ve added a whole bunch of listings over the past week, some of which you can check them out below, or you can get the full list on the site. And if you have a job opening at your company, feel free to post it (it is free, after all).

That’s it from me! See you in Vegas (with a glass of wine in hand).
Catherine

Gourmia to Roll Out Smart Multicooker, Coffee Brewer, and Dehydrator at CES
Brooklyn-based smart kitchen company Gourmia will be unveiling three new IoT-connected devices at CES: an air fryer, a multicooker, and a coffee roaster/brewer.

Lifesum Unveils a Google Assistant Version of Its Health-Tracking App
Swedish company Lifesum has unveiled a Google Assistant version of its nutrition app, which allows users to track meals, weight, and water intake using their voice instead of a phone or computer.

Editor Roundtable Podcast: 2019 Predictions And CES Preview
Take a listen to our latest editorial roundtable podcast, in which we discuss our 2019 predictions and what we’re most looking forward to for CES.

Pepsi and Segway Enter the Increasingly Crowded Delivery Robot Space
Both Pepsi and Ninebot, Segway’s parent company, have announced separate delivery robot initiatives.

MyWah to Debut Connected Wine Dispenser for Businesses at CES
MyWah, a connected wine dispenser which uses RFID-tagged bags to track wine temperature and portioning, is debuting at CES.

DoorDash Is Testing Self-Driving Cars in San Francisco
Third-party delivery service DoorDash just announced it has partnered with General Motors’ Cruise Automation to test autonomous vehicles in San Francisco.

As the Food Industry Wakes Up to Blockchain, Online Training Options are Now Available
It’s no secret that the food industry is rapidly awaking to the great promise of blockchain technology, and headlines abound about how it promises to make traditional paper ledger-based transactions obsolete, replaced by digital ledgers. A number of online blockchain resources are springing up to help educate companies on how to use this new technology.

Soylent Adds Snack Replacement Beverage to its Lineup
Rosa Foods, the company behind meal-replacement-in-a-bottle, Soylent, launched Soylent Bridge, a new, lighter liquid designed to replace your snacking on solids. The 11 oz. Soylent Bridge clocks in at 180 calories with 15 grams of plant-based protein and comes in chocolate flavor. The shelf-stable Bridge will last a year

Why Vertical Farming Won’t Grow Without More Data
Vertical farming may be getting lots of funding, but we don’t actually know how well it works. A research project from Princeton University is getting data from vertical farming and working to make an open-source framework for aspiring vertical farm companies.

New Year, New Food: U.K. Grocery and QSR’s Cash In on Veganuary
In the U.K., large grocery chains and fast-food joints alike are taking advantage of the growing interesting Veganuary — and plant-based eating in general.

Nestlé Introduces Plant-Based “Incredible Burger” to Disrupt Beyond and Impossible

Nestlé SA is hoping to carve out a piece of the plant-based pie — er, burger.

Today Bloomberg reported that the Swiss food company will launch a meat-free patty modestly called the “Incredible Burger” (not to be confused with the Impossible Burger) under its Garden Gourmet brand. The burger will be made of soy and wheat protein, and will join Garden Gourmet‘s meat-free lineup, which already includes smoked sausages, nuggets, cheeseburgers, and schnitzel. It’s expected to head to market in spring of 2019.

This announcement isn’t especially surprising. Nestlé is one of several Big Food companies investing more heavily in plant-based foods, taking advantage of growing consumer demand for vegetarian and vegan products. It isn’t even the first meat-free play by Nestlé: last year the corporation acquired meat-free company Sweet Earth and recently bought a majority stake of plant-based food company Terrafertil.

However, the Incredible Burger is the first notable Big Food effort to compete directly with meat-free products meant to look, cook, and bleed like the real thing. Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods — we’re looking at you. These startups have a lot of name recognition and are basically synonymous with the new wave of plant-based “meat.” Comparatively, Nestlé is late to the game.

But is it too late? It depends where Nestlé focuses their efforts. Impossible and Beyond may have a hold on the U.S. market, but they haven’t expanded much outside of the U.S. (yet). Nestlé would be smart to concentrate on the European market, where, despite several competitors like Moving Mountains and Naturli’ Foods, there’s still plenty of room for it to carve out its own space in the plant-based meat market. Given Nestlé’s size, it already has scale, manufacturing, and sales channels it can leverage to expand quickly. However, Beyond is set to go public in 2019, so it could theoretically raise enough money to present a challenge to Big Food players like Nestlé — or at least scare them a bit.

In the end, the plant-based meat market isn’t a zero-sum game. Demand for meaty meatless foods is widely predicted to grow over the next year, and Europe especially has a huge appetite for plant-based protein. It may be late to the game, but Nestlé’s new burger will still likely see “incredible” success.

Video: Rethinking Business Models in the Era of FoodTech

There was a time when Whirlpool was an appliance company, pure and simple. Nestlé focused exclusively on packaged goods. ChefSteps started as an online content community. But in the past few years, Whirlpool bought recipe content platform Yummly, Nestlé has added digital services, and Chefsteps has diversified into hardware and prepared food.

In the technology age, are the traditional roles of food companies breaking down?

Michael Wolf asked this question to Chris Young of ChefSteps, Stephanie Naegeli of Nestlé and Brett Dibkey of Whirlpool on the Smart Kitchen Summit stage. Watch the video below to see the panelists discuss how food companies are taking new, sometimes risky approaches in order to stay viable in the shifting smart kitchen ecosystem for years to come.

Rethinking Business Models In The Era of FoodTech

Look out for more videos of the panels, solo talks, and fireside chats from SKS 2018! We’ll be bringing them to you hot and fresh out the (smart) kitchen over the next few weeks.

Food Tech News Roundup: Baby Blockchain, Kombucha, and No More Eat24

Grab yourself another cup of nitro cold brew — it’s time for this week’s food tech news roundup! You know, that time when we assemble all the stories from around the web that we didn’t have time to write about, but are still worth a read. That time!

This week we have news about Nestlé’s foray into blockchain, food delivery closures, and some kombucha innovation. Yes, kombucha innovation. Enjoy!

 

Grubhub announces it’s shuttering Eat24
Bye bye, Eat24. This week news surfaced that Grubbub would be closing down the food delivery company, which it acquired in late 2017, by the end of 2018. This announcement came just a few days after food delivery giant Grubhub acquired online order management company LevelUp. According to Skift Table, Eat24 got the axe because, in a crowded food delivery market, not enough diners were loyal to its brand. Interestingly, Grubhub did not do the same to New York-based Seamless, another food delivery company under its umbrella.

 

Humm Kombucha develops patent-pending kombucha brewing process
Great news, kombucha lovers! This week brand Humm Kombucha announced that they had developed a fermentation process which results in the “first ever verified non-alcoholic raw kombucha” (patent pending). Kombucha, like other fermented beverages, can have small amounts of alcohol — which can be a problem for obvious reasons. Apparently, Humm figured out a way to brew a raw, live (that is, unpasteurized) kombucha that’s below the government standard of 0.5% ABV — and stays that way even when left unopened at room temperature.

 

Photo: Shutterstock

Nestlé dips toe into blockchain with baby food
Corporate food giant Nestlé is applying blockchain technology to its Gerber baby food products. The Wall Street Journal reported that Nestlé hopes that blockchain will let them track the fruits and vegetables that go into Gerber goods, and facilitate product recalls in case of contamination. Nestlé is also working with frenemies Unilever, Driscoll’s, and others on the Food Trust, an IBM-supported network working to increase transparency and traceability in the food system.

Did we miss any juicy food tech stories? Tweet us @TheSpoonTech!

No Substitute: Three Ways Science is Putting a New (and Improved) Spin on Sugar

Though companies have come up with various sugar substitutes over time, none have overthrown the king (and those substitutes might create their own problems). If you can’t beat ’em, you may as well use science to get down on the molecular level and join ’em.

Companies around the world are using various techniques not to replace sugar, but to change the way the substance is made or processed in the hopes of creating a better type of sugar. One that can be incorporated into the products we know, love, and crave, but doesn’t require as much of the sweet stuff.

Quartz has a story out today on DouxMatok, an Israeli startup that is combining sugar with food-grade silica to create a “sweeter sugar.” Evidently, sugar isn’t very good at hitting our taste buds, so food makers cram products full of it to attain their desired level of sweetness. A straightforward reduction in the amount of sugar in a product, then, is difficult to do without sacrificing taste.

DouxMatok gets around this by leveraging silica, which has lots of nooks and crannies that sugar molecules can fill. The sugar-packed silica diffuses more efficiently on our tongues, so food companies can use 40 percent less sugar in their products, without sacrificing the taste. The Quartz piece included a metaphor to help explain:

“Imagine 100 people in a house, each one holding a spoonful of sugar. If you ask them to go from room to room and then deposit the sugar into a jar, some will inevitably drop and spill sugar along the way. This is essentially what happens when you bite into a slice of normal cake. Now imagine one person in the house holding a sealed plastic bag containing the same amount of sugar. They’ll likely get to the jar without spilling any of it. The silica DouxMatok uses operates like the plastic bag.”

The startup just announced a partnership with European sugar company, Südzucker, to manufacture and commercialize Doxmatok’s sugar reduction process.

But Douxmatok isn’t the only company noodling with sugar molecules. Earlier this year, Nestlé unveiled a new sugar reduction technology of its own. They created a process of spraying sugar, powdered milk and water into hot air, which made the sugar develop microscopic holes. When this hole-y sugar hits your tongue, it still tastes as sweet — but all the holes means there’s less of it.

Nestlé debuted the new sugar structure in the Milkybar Wowsome (only available in Europe), which had 30 percent less sugar than comparable bars. The company said back in March that if it catches on (read: fools people well enough), the company will expand the technology into more chocolate brands.

Nutrition Innovation, on the other hand, is taking less of an atomic approach when making its traditional sugar replacement: Nucane. Instead, the company applies near-infrared scanning to raw sugar cane coming into a mill to alter the processing of it (crushing, washing, drying, etc.).

The result of these altered processing techniques is Nucane, which keeps minerals like calcium and potassium, which occur naturally in sugar, but has a lower glycemic index than traditional white refined sugar. Nutrition Innovation says Nucane provides more sustained energy after consumption compared to a sugar spike. Bonus: it can be swapped into existing recipes 1 for 1.

Nutrition Innovation entered into an agreement with Australia’s Sunshine Sugar to sell its Nucane to industrial sugar buyers, and the product is currently being tested by different companies around the world.

Ideally, these new scientific approaches to sugar will live up to their promises and spur even more innovation and investment. If we’re able to enjoy all the sweets with less sugar, the result would be pretty sweet.