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

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

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

Reengineering nature

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

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

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

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

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

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

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