A NEW, INNOVATIVE APPROACH TO SWEETENERS FOR ANIMAL FEEDS By Sarah Cooper, Global Business Development Manager, ADM


There is much more to sweeteners than just a sweet taste: sweeteners improve animal feeds in a number of important ways. This makes sweetener products worthy of greater attention and continued investment in research and innovation to optimise their beneficial effects.


than just a nice, sweet taste. Sweet taste receptors are also found in other regions of the body, including the intestines. When receptors in the intestines are activated by the sweetener, the capacity of the gut to absorb glucose, electrolytes and water is increased. This has significant nutritional and physiological implications, such as preventing post-weaning malabsorption and improving resilience against intestinal disorders. Research also shows that different species may perceive sweet taste differently due to interspecies genetic diversity in sweet taste receptor structure and function. This means that what one species perceives as sweet is not necessarily detected as sweet by another.


“ … When receptors in the intestines are activated by the sweetener, the capacity of the gut to absorb glucose, electrolytes and water is increased. … ”


More than just a sweet taste The key reason sweeteners are used in animal feeds is to improve palatability. They activate the lingual epithelium sweet taste receptor, initiating the gustatory pathway to perceive a pleasurable sweet taste. Sweetening products often contain potentiators and enhancers that increase the intensity of the sweetness, flavour qualities and/or the duration of the sensation. Formulations with sweeteners, potentiators and enhancers often


contain high-intensity, non-nutritive sweeteners which result in products that are hundreds of times sweeter than sugar. They can therefore be applied in very small quantities of 100-250 g per metric tonne of finished feed. Compared to traditional, natural sweeteners, these formulated sweeteners can represent a more space-efficient and cost-effective solution in feeds. These sweeteners can improve feed palatability in a number


of ways. By providing a sweet taste, it encourages the animals to increase their feed intake, resulting in improved body weight gain. Sweeteners can also mask unpleasant tastes present in the feed from the addition of other additives, including medications, or from poorer quality raw materials. In this sense, sweeteners add flexibility to feed material sourcing, enabling formulators to potentially procure cheaper or different feed materials which can be sourced locally and in a sustainable manner. Research has also established that there is more to these products


PAGE 34 MARCH/APRIL 2023 FEED COMPOUNDER Given the numerous ways that sweeteners improve feeds, this


interspecies difference in sweet taste perception is something that bears paying more attention to, to ensure that we gain optimal benefits from feeding animals with sweeteners and being cost-effective.


Developing new, innovat ive species-speci f ic sweeteners ADM has partnered with the University of Liverpool to better


understand the specificity and suitability of different sweetening compounds to stimulate the swine sweet taste receptor, leading to the development of next generation, swine-specific sweeteners. Sweeteners are commonly used in piglet feed at weaning to encourage feed intake and protect against malabsorption and intestinal disorders at this critical and stressful phase of production. An innovative 3-level approach was used to determine the


specificity and efficacy of different sweetening compounds to activate the swine sweet taste receptor. Initially, a cell-based in vitro model was used in which different sweetening compounds were applied to cells transfected with the swine sweet taste receptor genes, and the level of activation of the receptors was measured. This was followed by feeding trials assessing the activation levels of the gut-expressed sweet taste receptors. Finally, further in vivo studies assessed the improvement of feed palatability and consequent impact on feed intake and body weight gain.


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