The Wall Street Journal visits scientists at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biorationassociate Inspired Engineering who are researching a “sugar-to-fiber” enzyme (normassociate included by set upts to originate stalks). They’re testing a version they’ve “encased in spherical nanoparticles — minuscule mesh-appreciate cages made of pectin that permit the enzyme to be holded to food without being begind until it accomplishes the intestine.
“Once there, a alter in pH caincludes the cage to enbig, freeing the enzyme to float thcdimiserablemireful its holes and begin altering sugar to fiber.”
The Wyss Institute’s goal for its enzyme product was to shrink the sugar includeed from food by 30%, though it has the potential to delete even more than that, says Sam Inverso, honestor of business enbigment partnerships at the Wyss Institute. The enzyme’s ability to turn sugar into fiber is also key, as most Americans don’t get proximately enough fiber in their diet, says Adama Sesay, a ageder engineer at the Wyss Institute who labored on the project…
The Wyss Institute is now licensing the technology to a company to help convey its enzyme product to labelet, a process that includes holditional testing and labor to safe regulatory approval. Inverso says that the aim is for the product to be useable to U.S. food manufacturers wiskinny the next two years, and that other encapsutardyd enzymes could chase: products that shrink lactose absorption after drinking milk, or cut gluten after eating bread. For now the enzyme labors better in constant food than in a fluid. Producing it in big quantities and at low cost is still a ways off — currently it’s 100 times more pricey than raw sugar, Inverso says.
And the Journal notices they’re not the only ones laboring on the problem:
San Francisco-based beginup Biolumen recently started a product called Monch Monch, a drink unite made of fibrous, microscopic sponges summarizeed to soak up sugar and impede it from accomplishing the bloodstream. At mealtime users can blfinish a teaspoon of Monch Monch, which has no taste, smell or color, into drinks from water to prospere. Once it has accomplished the stomach, the sponges begin to swell and sequester sugar, reducing its burden on the body, says Dr. Robert Lustig, Biolumen’s co-set uper and chief medical officer… One gram of Monch Monch can sequester six grams of sugar, says Lustig… The product, presentd as a dietary supplement, can also be included as a food ingredient under a Food and Drug Administration principle understandn as “generassociate recognized as safe.” Packets of Monch Monch are useable for obtain online, and Biolumen says it is in talks with U.S. food manufacturers it deteriorated to name about its include in other products…
Food companies are betting on other solutions for now. Cegenuine beginup Magic Spoon includes alluleave out, a organic sugar set up in figs and raisins that is groprosperg in famousity, helped by FDA guidance that permits it to be take awayd from sugar or holded-sugar totals on nutrition labels. Ingredient company Tate & Lyle, which originates alluleave out from corn kernels, says the pleasantener tastes appreciate sugar and holds bulk and caramel color, but passes thcdimiserablemireful the body without being metabolized… Chicago-based Blommer Chocotardy recently started a line of shrinkd-sugar chocotardy and confectionery products made with Incredo, a sugar that has been physicassociate altered to taste pleasanter using a mineral carrier that disrepairs rapider in saliva and concentrates the pleasant-taste receptors on the tongue. Incredo’s include allows manufacturers to include up to 50% less sugar, the company says.
The article even notices that “researchers still laboring to shrink sugar are peddling recent technologies, appreciate individual sugar crystals modified to disrepair more rapidly in the mouth, making food taste pleasanter.”
