Ajinomoto Health & Nutrition North America, Inc. and the protein discovery company Shiru are partnering to develop and commercialize sweet proteins for use in beverages and specialty products. This partnership combines unparalleled strengths from both entities to bring natural, functional ingredients to market: Shiru’s powerful AI-driven discovery capabilities and AHN’s deep expertise in fermentation.
The partnership is the first foray by the leader in amino acids, Ajinomoto Health & Nutrition, to test sweet proteins – long considered a holy grail application for the food industry.
Sweet proteins can replace sugar and other sweeteners in food and beverages without spiking blood sugar levels associated with diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease globally. A handful of known sweet proteins derived from fruits and berries grow near the equator. These known sweet proteins show tremendous early promise and face challenges related to onset/lingering taste effects and stability. To overcome these challenges, Shiru will use Flourish™, its AI-driven discovery platform, to uncover additional natural, food-safe proteins not previously known to be sweet.
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Sweet proteins are a promising, potentially more sustainable alternative to HFCS and sugar production and are an appealing sugar replacement in food and beverage product development. Remarkably, sweet proteins can deliver up to 5,000 times more sweetness than sugar, offering the potential to replace 70-90% of sweetness provided by sugar in food and beverage products.
Unlike sugar, sweet proteins do not cause blood sugar levels to spike because the body metabolizes them differently. When you eat sugar, your body metabolizes it into glucose and fructose, which triggers your pancreas to release insulin. Insulin helps glucose enter cells to be used for energy. By contrast, sweet proteins do not trigger insulin release, which may help manage blood sugar and diabetes. Sweet proteins are digested like any other dietary protein, the large-molecule building blocks of our bodies. Because of this, they are not harmful to the gut microbiome.
Ajinomoto Health & Nutrition’s existing portfolio of sweetener ingredients has a tremendous position in the market, and a customer base that includes the world’s biggest food and beverage companies. In addition to its sweetener portfolio in the food and beverage sectors, Ajinomoto Health & Nutrition also has leading fermentation-produced products across other flavor applications, including biopharmaceutical, sports and wellness nutrition, animal nutrition, nutraceutical, specialty and personal care, regenerative medicine, and medical food industries.
“Our partnership with Shiru is one of many examples of our approach to innovation,” said Ryan Smith, Chief Growth Officer and Executive Vice President at Ajinomoto Health and Nutrition. “We believe in working with partners and solutions that uniquely complement our century plus of expertise in the ingredient space, our expansive portfolio of products for improving nutrition, and our dedicated and talented team around the globe. As collective industry leaders, we believe this partnership will position both of us to be on the cutting-edge of what’s next in functional ingredients, specifically in protein, an increasing category of interest for consumers. This partnership, and our balanced strengths, will allow us to identify natural proteins for use as sweeteners across numerous applications to meet the changing demands of the food industry and what consumers expect.”
SOURCE: Businesswire