Sweeteners The rarer, the better?
The Europe rare sugar market exceeded $200m in 2019 and is anticipated to register a growth rate of 3.5% between 2020 and 2026. Rare sugars are monosaccharides that rarely occur in nature such as D-allose, D-tagatose, D-allulose, xylitol, L-ribose, for example, and can be obtained from biochemical processes such as enzymatic conversion and fermentation. Rare sugars can suppress hyperglycemia and lipid accumulation that helps in preventing diabetes and obesity. Rare sugars contain fewer calories than normal sugars, therefore gaining popularity among consumers as substitutes for sugars and artificial sweeteners such as fructose, sucrose and HFS.
The utilisation of rare sugars has gained traction owing to rising consumer awareness on the use of sugar alternatives and reducing calorie content in diets, creating lucrative growth opportunities for the Europe rare sugar industry.
Source: Graphical Research
Smoothing the regulatory pathway On top of manufacturing challenges, the regulatory pathway for rare sugar-containing products remains unclear. “A major problem for these kinds of ingredients is that they would be labelled as sugars,” Kakkad explains. “At present, according to most food regulations across the globe, any carbohydrate that is partially digested in the body must be labelled as a sugar.”
That said, the FDA has allowed the low-calorie sweetener allulose to be excluded from total and added sugars counts on nutrition and supplement facts labels when used as an ingredient. “It is different from other sugars in that it is not metabolised by the human body in the same way as table sugar,” the FDA wrote. “It has fewer calories, produces only negligible increases in blood glucose or insulin levels, and does not promote dental decay.”
A selection of different types of sugar and sweeteners are increasingly used as sugar substitutes.
The result showed that, compared with fermentation processes, the space-time yields of their process were significantly higher, successfully demonstrating the potential for highly cost-efficient manufacturing. “We have made an important breakthrough as we can now demonstrate our ability to design, create and validate a commercial process on a large scale,” said EnginZyme CEO and co-founder Karim Engelmark Cassimjee. “Delivering these significant product volumes already, at our early stage of development, strengthens our leadership position in cell-free bioproduction and is an important step towards broad use of our technology.”
As awareness continues to grow of the health benefits of rare sugars and how they are digested, Kakkad’s hope is that other regulators follow suit. Of course, this is predicated on the fact that scientists and manufacturers can overcome synthesis and formulation issues.
“Ingredients that can help consumers control their lifestyle diseases and symptoms of their lifestyle diseases are in demand, even if consumers are not yet aware of what those ingredients are,” she concludes. “Once ingredient manufacturers and food and beverage companies have solid information about the health benefits of these ingredients, and once those get published for the public to see, that’s when we believe they will begin to make a huge impact. At that point, the demand would be limitless.” ●
82
Ingredients Insight /
www.ingredients-insight.com
Eskymaks/
Shutterstock.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92
