Sugar Reduction

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Any drink can quench thirst, but according to Cargill’s latest insight report, today’s discerning sippers are seeking multifunctional drinks that support wellbeing, enhance experiences, improve performance, align with social values and taste great.

Ingredion Incorporated used SupplySide West 2023 (SSW) to showcase creative new ways to add protein and fiber, reduce sugars, and help food and beverage manufacturers reimagine innovation to grow consumer preference.  

Ingredion Incorporated used SupplySide West 2023 to showcase its Kerr by Ingredion portfolio of fruit- and vegetable-based juices, purees, concentrates, essences, distillates and custom formulations (from both conventional and organic sources). 

HealthTech BioActives (HTBA), a global leader in natural flavonoids and active forms of B12, invited attendees of Fi Europe to visit HTBA stand 4.0D122 on November 28-30, 2023, in Frankfurt, Germany. Visitors to the booth can meet with HTBA experts and learn more about how HTBA’s solutions can help overcome taste challenges such as sweetness enhancement and taste masking.

BENEO has extended a production line at its Pemuco, Chile, operation that enables processing capabilities for the production of its liquid chicory root fiber Orafti® Oligofructose LL with a significantly expanded shelf life of one year.

The new juices are made with real fruit juice and sweetened with stevia, Zero Sugar is an excellent source of Vitamin C. 

Creating lower-sugar alternatives to high-sugar dairy products has becomes especially important considering that, according to the CDC’s 2022 National Diabetes Statistics Report, some 130 million Americans—around one-third of the total population—have diabetes or pre-diabetes, and more than 10% don’t even know it. But the dairy industry has not been asleep at the wheel when it comes to this crisis.

The past decade has seen the rise of natural, botanical sweeteners of all types and abilities flooding the market. These plant-derived sweeteners range from zero-calorie HIS products such as stevia and monkfruit to monosaccharides like unrefined plant sugars which offer only a slight reduction in calories but bring other advantages to the table. The challenge for product formulators is to meet the demand for products with less sugar but make them as indistinguishable as possible from their full-sugar counterparts.

Sugar reduction—applying the term as a generic for full-calorie sweeteners—remains one of the top concerns among consumers, yet the lack of willingness to sacrifice flavor and function remains a challenge to product developers.

With only a couple of exceptions, lower-and zero-calorie sugar alternatives have failed to live up to the multifaceted functionality and flavor of sucrose and its components, glucose and fructose. In fact, great taste remains one of the primary obstacles to overcome with the range of sugar alternatives cropping up in the marketplace. A close second, of course, is performance in a formulation.