Icon Foods, NutraEx Food share ingredients to cut sugar, without sacrificing function at IFT FIRST

"CPG companies need to be open-minded to the fact that the modulators and blends are going to bring a lot of value and potentially cost savings to them," Kash Rocheleau, CEO of Icon Foods, told FoodNavigator-USA at IFT FIRST.

Icon Foods: Bakery brands are ‘looking for novel ways of decreasing their sugar’

Icon Foods shared its range of sweetener solutions and inclusions and launched its one-to-one replacement for brown sugar called Iconisweet Gold. Iconisweet Gold blends sweeteners — erythritol, allulose and monk fruit — with molasses coloring and flavors and is ideal for baked goods, beverages and savory applications, the company shared in a press release.  

Icon Foods released Iconisweet Gold to meet bakers' demands for sugar reduction without sacrificing sugar's functionality, Thom King, chief innovation officer at Icon Foods, told FoodNavigator-USA at IFT FIRST.

Sugar not only provides sweetness but also a range of functional benefits from moistness to cakes to caramelizing toppings, King noted.

Using a sweetener like erythritol as a one-to-one substitution for sugar often “falls short” in bakery applications, requiring CPG companies to take a holistic approach to product formulation and the possible use of blended ingredients, he said.

“We are seeing a lot more bigger CPGs coming to us looking for novel ways of decreasing their sugar in the baked category. ... It is a tight needle to thread, but it is not impossible,” he elaborated.  

NutraEX Food reduces sugar by inhibiting the conversion of sucrose

Canadian sweetener company NutraEx’s new BI-Sugar leverages L-arabinose to inhibit the absorption of calories from sugar by blocking its ability to convert sucrose into glucose and fructose, Harvey Martens, company co-founder and VP of business development, told FoodNavigator-USA at IFT FIRST.

NutraEx's L-arabinose comes from an exclusive distribution with China-based Healtang Biotech, the sweetener company shared in a press release​. The ingredient is GRAS, and the company is seeking regulatory approval in other countries.

“There is an enzyme called sucrase that will break up the molecule sucrose and separate out glucose from fructose. And the glucose is the part that feeds into your bloodstream and gives you the energy but also gives you that sugar spike. What will happen is in the presence of L-arabinose that process is inhibited. It does not happen. It is not 100% removed but up to 60% of that sucrose will not get broken down into its component parts,” Martens explained.

NutraEx created BI-Sugar with patented dry-embedding technology and is used in conjunction with another sweetener like sucrose, allulose or erythritol — which NutraEx also provides — and other ingredients, he said. L-arabinose also imparts a caramel color and browning effect to applications, Martens noted.

CPG companies concerned about adding more ingredients to their label can work with NutraEx to "limit the number of additional ingredients to keep it clean label,” Martens added.