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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

sugar reduction

B.T. Sweets Unveils Cambya, an Alternative Sugar Made From Plant-Fibers and Botanicals

When serial entrepreneur Dagi Pekatch began showing early signs of developing Type 2 diabetes, he began to study the negative health effects of sugar. His research not only showed him he wasn’t alone – in just the United States, one in three people have prediabetes and worldwide, it is estimated that 422 million people live with diabetes – but also made him realize our sugar addiction represented a huge opportunity for a better alternative. It wouldn’t be long before he co-founded a start-up called B.T. Sweets in 2019, which this week unveiled its first product: Cambya, a sugar alternative made from soluble fibers, botanicals, and monk fruit.

Cambya is a one-to-one sugar replacement, meaning that it uses the same measurements used for standard white sugar. For example, if a muffin recipe called for 1/2 cup of cane sugar, then a 1/2 cup of Cambya could be used instead. Since soluble fibers are one of the main components of this alternative sugar, the company says this improves digestion and increases satiety.

Sugar poses a major problem in our modern society: we eat way too much of it, and it’s making us sick. Of course, while many other alternative sweeteners like stevia, erythritol, monk fruit extract are already widely available, it is well known that many of these zero sugar sweeteners have a bitter or “off” aftertaste. With more consumers choosing to reduce their added sugar intake, the sugar-alternative market is projected to be worth $10.2 billion USD by 2026.

Another start-up called The Supplant Company has a similar idea to Cambya. This company also uses plant fibers to craft a low-sugar, high-fiber sweetener, but what sets Supplant apart is that it uses the fibers of agricultural side streams like corn, wheat, and rice. DouxMatok and BetterJuice are two other companies in the food tech space that have also developed sugar reduction technologies.

Cambya operates on a plug-and-play model where it will work with both new and existing CPG companies to achieve the goal of creating products with lower added-sugar content. Manufacturers have the option to only use Cambya, or blend it with other sugars. According to the company, Cambya has been tested in many confectionery applications, in everything from cake to pudding to ice cream. Cake without all the sugar (and negative health effects!) and sounds pretty sweet to me.

Siggi’s Launches a ‘Palate Training Kit’ to Help Consumers Cut Sugar Intake

If you regularly partake of the standard American diet, there’s a good chance your palate is pretty desensitized to the natural flavor of a lot of foods. The more sugar we consume, the more desensitized our palates become, and you don’t need me to tell you a lot of our food is packed with added sugars.

But reseting your palate is not an overnight process. With that in mind, Siggi’s, a company best known for its Icelandic skyr cultured dairy products, has released what it’s calling a “Palate Training Kit.”

It sounds complex, but the concept is actually quite straightforward and low-tech: follow some tips, tricks, and experiments provided by the company and, over the course of a few months, you can retrain your palate to crave less refined sugar. 

Said kit is not full of food tech bells and whistles, either. Instead, it comes with a guide full of tips on how to retrain your palate, starting with simple steps like gradually reducing the amount of sugar in your food by reading more labels and making healthier choices. (For example, use cinnamon as a topper instead of sugar on your oatmeal.)

From there, users can do activities geared towards helping them fully taste their food, such as wearing an eye mask during a meal to activate your other senses to the eating process. The kit also includes a timer and a month’s supply of Siggi’s in various flavors. Users are encouraged to time themselves for 15 seconds while eating a bit of skyr in order to pay better attention to flavors, texture, color, and other elements. 

While there’s undeniably a layer of “marketing gimmick” here, there is also a decent amount of consumer education bundled into the package. Americans consume about 22 teaspoons of added sugar per day, largely because of its inclusion in packaged and processed goods. Because of that, our palates believe certain foods should be sweeter than they naturally are.

For example, at an online event this week showing off the kit, Siggi’s founder Siggi Hilmarsson suggested that yogurt in its more natural form is meant to have a tart, slightly sour taste. You wouldn’t know that from eating a can of Yoplait, though (18 grams of sugar per serving).

Hilmarsson pointed out that one of the more difficult parts of retraining the human palate is that it takes time, sometimes up to three months or more. The result, however, is that foods that once tasted normal (think fancy Starbucks drinks or boxed cereal) will start to taste way too sweet.

As is always the case with consumer education, there’s a big transition between raising awareness and enacting real behavioral change. Whether a simple kit like the one Siggi’s just released can do the trick is partly a matter of how motivated the user is in the first place. Nonetheless, it’s another piece of useful information about how we can improve our eating habits over time.  

The kit includes a “flavor desensitization reversal guide,” an eyemask, a timer, a journal, a spoon, and 30 days’ worth of Siggi’s yogurt in various flavors (including plain). The package is available for $30 directly from Siggi’s.

DouxMatok to Scale Production of Its Sugar Tech in N. America with Lantic

There’s good news for people in the U.S. who like sweets but want to reduce their sugar intake. Israeli startup DouxMatok announced today that its not-a-sugar-substitute will be mass produced by sugar manufacturer Lantic here in North America starting next year.

As you are probably well aware, we eat a lot of added sugar in our foods here in the U.S., and that is a problem. Too much sugar can have deleterious effects on the body including heart and liver problems.

DouxMatok’s technology aims to reduce our sugar intake without sacrificing the taste of sugar. But the company is not creating a sugar substitute. Instead, its approach is to make sugar more efficient when it hits our tongue. It does this by attaching sugar molecules to another edible substance. Originally, the company used silica, which, as we covered back in 2018:

[Silica] 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.

Since then, DouxMatok has updated its technology, replacing silica with an undisclosed odorless, calorie-free mineral that the company said is more effective.

The result, according to DouxMatok, is that food companies can still use sugar in their recipes, they just don’t need to use as much.

DouxMatok signed a similar deal with European sugar company Südzucker back in 2018. With today’s announcement, DouxMatok’s Incredo Sugar, as it is branded, will be made available at industrial volumes for food companies here in North America. Lantic is only handling the manufacturing and production, with DouxMatok doing all of the sales and marketing of its Incredo Sugar.

DouxMatok is one of a number of companies taking a technological approach to fighting the scourge of sugar. Nestlé has a process that restructures sugar particles to maintain sweetness at lower volumes. Joywell is creating plant-based alternatives to sugar through fermentation. And Nutrition Innovation creates sugar with a lower glycemic index through different refinement processes.

As someone who enjoys a fun-sized Snickers (or two) as an afternoon pick me up, these types of sugar improvements can’t come soon enough. DouxMatok says that products using its Incredo Sugar will be on store shelves here in the U.S. by the second half of 2021.

UPDATE: This post originally stated that the new version of DouxMatok’s sugar uses a clean label fiber. This fiber-based version is actually still under development, and the mineral-based product will be what hits North America.

DouxMatok To Bring Its More-Efficient Sugar to North American Food Products

Israeli food tech company DouxMatok has entered into a deal with a North American sugar refiner to manufacture commercial quantities of its “more efficient” sugar, according to Food Navigator. The first products containing this sugar are expected to hit the market early in 2021. 

DouxMatok’s Sugar Reduction Solution uses the food additive silica to carry sugar molecules and make a food taste sweeter than it would using a comparable amount of plain sugar. Using this method, food companies could use less sugar in their products, since the sugar-infused silica diffuses the sweet taste more efficiently. DouxMatox says food companies can typically use about 40 percent less sugar in their products and still get the same sweet taste.

The company told Food Navigator this week that it is currently working on a second-generation version of its product that will use a more “clean label” fiber than silica (which passes through the body once the sugar is metabolized). While he couldn’t name specifics, DouxMatok founder Eran Baniel said this new carrier for the sugar molecules is definitely a fiber and that it is “slightly more effective than silica in certain applications.”

Nor did Baniel say which North American sugar refiner his company has teamed up with to get its first products in the market. The company struck a deal with Südzucker in Europe in 2018. The North American partner will be announced in October.

While it doesn’t exactly take science to understand the harmful effects of sugar on the human body, many companies are leveraging science to create alternatives. Joywell Foods uses protein found in the “miracle berry” to create an alternative sweetener. Alluose is another sugar alternative, and one Magic Spoon uses to sweeten its kids-cereal-for-adults product.

DouxMatok’s silica product currently works with baked goods, confections, chocolates, and a few other products. According to Food Navigator, the company hopes to find a similar sugar-reduction method and technology for “high-water activity products” like sodas and juices.