The time for sugar reduction is now

Future leg­is­la­tion and pres­sure from com­peti­tors cre­ate incen­tives to put sug­ar reduc­tion high on the agen­da. But not just any sug­ar reduc­tion. It must be of nat­ur­al ori­gin. In recent years, the devel­op­ment and inno­va­tion of ingre­di­ents of nat­ur­al ori­gin have cre­at­ed com­pet­i­tive solutions.

Pressure from legislation and new market standards

Pressure can come from dif­fer­ent sources. It could be new manda­to­ry leg­is­la­tion or com­peti­tors mov­ing posi­tions for­ward and cre­at­ing new mar­ket standards.

Since 2016, the fol­low­ing coun­tries: Chile, Israel, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay have made it manda­to­ry to put a warn­ing labelling on foods that con­tain high lev­els of unhealthy ingre­di­ents. Whether we will see sim­i­lar leg­is­la­tion in the EU remains to be seen. Instead of warn­ing text on unhealthy prod­ucts, per­haps sug­ar-reduced prod­ucts will have a pos­i­tive-sound­ing label, to help con­sumers pick them instead.

Much like the Swedish brand Felix, which recent­ly launched a new type of labelling that will make it eas­i­er for con­sumers to make cli­mate-smart and con­scious choic­es. Products with the least cli­mate impact are reward­ed and giv­en a high­ly vis­i­ble label.

The com­par­i­son is some­what lame, Felix’s action isn’t sprung from new leg­is­la­tion, it is about cli­mate impact and not nec­es­sar­i­ly about unhealthy ingre­di­ents. But the motive is the same; to help con­sumers make informed choices.

A race to the top

Another form of pres­sure that often comes up is sug­ar tax. The issue of sug­ar tax­es is a water­shed among politi­cians and experts in the health­care and food and bev­er­age indus­try. Some believe that it can lead to the con­sump­tion of oth­er junk and oth­ers believe that it has a great sym­bol­ic val­ue and is impor­tant for that rea­son. Regardless of what one thinks in the actu­al issue, a sug­ar tax is some­thing that has the poten­tial to change the mar­ket for sug­ar-sweet products.

And whether it’s sug­ar tax, warn­ing texts, labels or some­thing else, these pres­sures can grow and lead to an intense race where every­one wants to be num­ber one at sug­ar reduc­tion overnight. In much the same way as now hap­pen­ing with elec­tri­fi­ca­tion in the auto­mo­tive indus­try. One way to get around this is to sim­ply take the bull by the horns by gath­er­ing knowl­edge, inves­ti­gat­ing rel­e­vant options and get­ting start­ed with high-qual­i­ty sug­ar reduction.

Reducing sug­ar is impor­tant but just as impor­tant is what replaces sug­ar; it is about reduc­ing sug­ar the right way.

But what does that mean?

Conscious consumers

The food and bev­er­age indus­try is under­go­ing some­what of a rev­o­lu­tion as con­sumer pref­er­ences change and new inno­v­a­tive ingre­di­ents and solu­tions reach the mar­ket. Things that recent­ly seemed unlike­ly are now a real­i­ty; Buying milk made from oats or veg­e­tar­i­an steaks doesn’t raise an eye­brow. Behind the scenes, among oth­er things, are pro­tein pow­der from insects and bev­er­ages with microal­gae wait­ing to be tomorrow’s great success.

The same pace of inno­va­tion can be seen in the field of sug­ar reduc­tion. Artificial sweet­en­ers have a bad rep­u­ta­tion, instead, con­sumers demand healthy ingre­di­ents of nat­ur­al ori­gin. They are wel­come to con­tribute with func­tion, for exam­ple, increased con­tent of fibre or pro­tein. This has accel­er­at­ed the pace of inno­va­tion. The over­all healthy trend that has been going on for a while has now been revived in due to the pandemic.

So, what are these ingre­di­ents? Let’s start off with ste­via.

Sugar reduction of natural origin

Almost ten years ago, ste­via was launched as a sweet­en­er of nat­ur­al ori­gin. But it is real­ly the sweet ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides that are extract­ed from the plant ste­via that we have to thank. At first, only the ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides ste­vio­side could be extract­ed. It was cer­tain­ly sweet but also had a strong and bit­ter after­taste. The boost came with Rebaudioside A (Reb A) which had a bet­ter taste pro­file and still is a big sell­er among ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides. Recently, improve­ments in extract­ing the real­ly rare ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides with the great­est sweet­ness have been made – such as Rebaudioside M (Reb M).

Thaumatin and monk fruit

Other inter­est­ing sweet­en­ers of nat­ur­al ori­gin are thau­matin and monk fruit. Thaumatin is cur­rent­ly approved as a sweet­en­er and flavour enhancer and monk fruit is soon expect­ed to become an approved ingre­di­ent in the EU.

But ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides, as well as thau­matin and monk fruit, are high-inten­si­ty sweet­en­ers. In a com­plete sug­ar reduc­tion, you usu­al­ly have to replace the oth­er prop­er­ties of the sug­ar, for exam­ple, the bulk.

One ingre­di­ent that is grow­ing in pop­u­lar­i­ty is var­i­ous forms of dietary fibres. In addi­tion to being good for the stom­ach, fibres are also excel­lent ingre­di­ents in sug­ar reduc­tion. Fibres cre­ate bulk and some vari­eties also come with some sweetness.

Summary

Let’s sum­ma­rize the var­i­ous insights:

• Pressure from leg­is­la­tion and com­peti­tors cre­ates incen­tives for food pro­duc­ers to put sug­ar reduc­tion high on the agenda.
• Consumers love sweet­ness but want to get rid of the neg­a­tive aspects of sug­ar. They are also becom­ing more health-con­scious and increas­ing­ly inter­est­ed in ingre­di­ents of nat­ur­al origin.
• The solu­tion for food pro­duc­ers is to invest in the devel­op­ment and inno­va­tion of new solu­tions with nat­ur­al ori­gins but which also offer sweet­ness, taste and mouthfeel.

A complete solution

Developing a com­plete solu­tion for sug­ar reduc­tion on your own is dif­fi­cult and comes with a hefty price. It requires skills that are not always avail­able inter­nal­ly at food producers.

Bayn has devel­oped a solu­tion that is based on nat­ur­al ori­gin, which doesn’t com­pro­mise on taste and mouthfeel.

We call it sweet­ened fibres. It is a 1: 1 solu­tion con­sist­ing of var­i­ous forms of fibres, sug­ar alco­hols and ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides. Sweetened fibres come in dif­fer­ent vari­eties for dif­fer­ent types of foods.

Contact us

Are you curi­ous about sweet­ened fibres? Take a look at our range of ser­vices or con­tact us if you want to know more about how we can help you reduce sug­ar in a prop­er way.