Key Takeaways
- Consumers increasingly prefer managing their health through food, driving a need for sugar reduction due to the health risks associated with excess sugar consumption.
- Global trends exist in sugar reduction, but regional regulations and consumer expectations can complicate product development.
- Sugar serves many roles beyond sweetness, including enhancing flavor balance and texture, making its reduction challenging.
- Non-nutritive high-intensity sweeteners may offer alternatives to sugar, but they come with unique formulation challenges.
- Successful sugar reduction requires a tailored approach that focuses on the overall sensory experience, not just sweetness.
With all of the talk around better-for-you, cleaner labels, and functional ingredients, few approaches to addressing these trends are generating as much attention as sugar reduction.
This is for a good reason.
For starters, consumers’ desire for healthier products isn’t just growing; it’s evolving.
A recent survey found that a majority of consumers (76%), regardless of age, income, insurance status, or existing conditions, would prefer to manage their health through food rather than prescription medications.
While prescriptions and medical interventions remain important and necessary tools for many, this highlights how views on nutrition are changing.
People are now looking to diet as a primary way not only to manage their health but also to prevent and even reverse certain chronic conditions.
The chief among these is obesity, which is associated with a wide range of other negative health outcomes.
Often linked to obesity is excess sugar.
To put this into perspective, the average American adult consumes 17 teaspoons of added sugar every day, 2–3 times the recommended amount. This overconsumption of sugar is associated with an increased risk of diabetes, fatty liver, cardiovascular disease, and more.
In addition to consumer sentiment, government regulators are looking to address this head-on. Prominent examples include the black labels placed on High Fat/Sugar/Sodium (HFFS) products spreading throughout Latin America.
As a result, it’s easy to see why sugar reduction is now front and center for many developers.
With that being said, as simple as the concept may be, effective sugar reduction is definitely not without its challenges.
That’s why we wanted to take this definitive Developer’s Guide to Sugar Reduction as an opportunity to explore these challenges and how Edlong’s taste technologies can help you overcome them.
Sugar Reduction Challenges for Food and Beverage Developers
Market Challenges in Sugar Reduction
The trend towards healthier, better-for-you food and beverage options are truly global.
So, while sugar reduction may be a universal goal, developing for each region, its regulations, and consumer expectations will vary.
For example, some estimate that the US consumes more sugar than any other country on average. Which makes sense, considering American products often have larger portions and, in many cases, higher sugar content than those in other countries.
“Ideally, you could gradually reduce the amount of sugar and allow consumers to adjust their palettes and expectations. Unfortunately for developers that’s not really a viable option now,” explains Dr. Lourdes Mato, Principal Scientist-Applied Research at Edlong.
Elaborating, she states that this is due to the growing understanding and resulting urgency demanded by consumers. This goes hand in hand with expectations. In markets that consume higher volumes of sugar, consumers will naturally expect higher levels of sweetness.
But it’s not just about the perceived level of sweetness; it will also directly impact the whole sensory experience. Therefore, it’s not as simple as swapping sugar for an alternative sweetener. The experience simply isn’t the same. We’ll dive more into why that is shortly.
In addition, there is also a regulatory aspect.
Regulatory Challenges Driving Sugar Reduction
Governments worldwide are seeking to improve and protect the health of their constituents. While often seen as steps in the right direction, shifting regulations can dictate your approach to sugar reduction.
As previously mentioned, Latin American countries are helping to lead the way, and Mexico is a perfect illustration of this.
“The obesity rate, and other health conditions in Mexico had become such a problem the government felt it had to step in,” says Nestor Vasquez, Edlong’s Applications Manager–LATAM.
“These black labels are designed to create awareness that leads to healthier decisions, especially for parents and their children. But there are financial costs associated with this. Not just for the consumers. But for developers who want to avoid these labels and offer healthier product options.”
These external pressures and expectations are only part of the sugar-reduction equation. Understanding them is critical to choosing the right formulation strategy.
However, even the best approaches introduce a whole host of new challenges for developers to contend with.
Functional Development Challenges
The Roles of Sugar Beyond Sweetness
Sugar is sweetness. At least that’s how we often think about it.
But it actually does so much more than that from a sensory perspective that we may not consider. This is a major reason why sugar reduction can be so challenging.
“Sugar is incredible at adding balance to foods,” says Dr. Mato.
“Think about fruit. When you think about fruits, before it ripens it’s often bitter or sour in some cases with a perception of astringency. But as the large carbohydrates break down to sugar it doesn’t only provide sweetness, it helps to balance out those tastes, helping to enhance the experience.”
She continues, “We see the same thing with traditional savory and salty dishes. Sugar plays a role as an enhancer of salty and umami taste perception and helps round that out. Balancing and tying the whole taste experience together. Sugar is also an important component developing the caramelization and certain so-call browning taste.”
Julie Drainville, Director of Global Sensory & Innovation at Edlong, adds, “Sugar has been used for a long time to improve palatability in so many ways. In addition to adding balance, it can help in masking off notes like protein or other ingredients. That’s why much like salt, when you try to reduce sugar your whole product might end up lacking. Because you’re not only losing sweetness, you’re losing that sensory and flavor enhancement.”
Sugar also serves important purposes for the functionality, performance, and even safety of a formulation.
“Whether it’s the thickness of sauces, mouthfeel of beverages, moisture in bakery, or even the unwanted ice crystals sensation in mouth due to sugar crystallization in ice cream, sugar plays a major role in texture perception,” states Dr. Mato.
“Then from a safety perspective, sugar helps control water activity. Which may be crucial for extending shelf life and preventing microbial growth.”
These are all factors to consider not only when reducing sugar, but also when replacing it with alternatives.
Sugar Replacement Strategies
Although we are primarily focused on sugar reduction, it’s important to also touch on an approach that often goes hand in hand.
That is sugar replacement.
Part of this is because most reductions will require the addition of an alternative to conventional sugar.
While sugar-reduction strategies often use non-nutritive sweeteners like stevia, monkfruit, and allulose, which we will cover in the next section, there is a growing segment seeking more nutritious alternatives.
According to Dr. Mato, “Now you’re starting to see developers that are exploring more ‘natural’ options like honey, maple, or date sugar. These alternatives may contain the same amount of sucrose or fructose. But they often have less processing and added benefits, like antioxidants and lower glycemic impacts.”
These may be viable alternatives for certain developers and demographics, but they, too, come with their own set of problems.
They include, but are not limited to:
- Performance variances to traditional sugar
- Sensory changes (texture, mouthfeel, aroma)
- Color and flavor impartation
- Little or no reduction in calories
- Potentially increased costs
Although they share some of the same functional challenges, non-nutritive sweeteners, especially natural high-intensity sweeteners, are the preferred options for many.
Sugar Reduction Challenges: Non-Nutritive, High-Intensity Sweeteners
It’s easy to see why developers gravitate towards these sweeteners when reducing sugar.
Alternative sweeteners like monkfruit, stevia, allulose, and erythritol are all either natural or based on naturally occurring molecules.
Moreover, they’re sweet, very sweet.
Stevia, for example, despite having zero calories, offers around 200 times the sweetness of sugar.
This is thanks to the unique structure of rebaudioside A (Reb A), the glycoside molecule responsible for the sweetness.
But as Eric Diaz, Certified Flavorist at Edlong, explains, this fact alone can make formulating with these ingredients difficult.
“The first thing we have to get out of the way is that none of these things will compare with sugar. We have to be aware of that. It’s actually a simple function of biology.”
He continues, “Certain sweet compounds act like a lock and key with our sweetness receptors. Naturally occurring basic sugars like sucrose, fructose, and lactose bind and pretty much fit perfectly. On the other hand, although a lot of the molecules from these other sweeteners activate your sweetness receptors, they either don’t bind fully, or don’t bind long enough, or they stay bound too long. So it’s like trying to jimmy a lock. It might ‘fit’, but it’s not the right key. This is why even though it’s sweet, it’s instantly perceived as ‘artificial’.”
Diaz sees these stereochemical differences as likely contributors to other challenges beyond sweetness.
“The shape of these compounds may also impact mouthfeel. Reducing the thicker syrupiness, and maybe even imparting a bit of powdery texture.”
Moreover, along with lingering sweetness and reduced viscosity, they may add unwanted metallic offnotes.
These issues, although challenging, are far from dealbreakers when developing sugar-reduced formulations.
They are, however, the reason we believe every sugar-reduction approach should start with sensory in mind.
Sensory: The #1 Key to Sugar Reduction
“I always tell people, above all ‘taste is king’,” emphasizes Drainville.
“No matter how much people may want healthier products, taste remains the #1 driver of liking. It’s important to understand that, by taste, consumers are often thinking of the overall sensory experience. This includes basic tastes, flavor, texture, and other sensations.”
She adds, “While each of these perceptions have specific mechanisms to communicate sensations to your brain, they’re relationship is complex.”
This complexity is due to cross-modal interactions. In other words, the brain integrates multiple sensory stimuli, allowing them to influence or enhance the perception of other senses.
Understanding these complex interactions is foundational for a sensory-based sugar-reduction strategy.
Taste, Flavor, and Cross-Modality
As Diaz puts it, “With cross-modalities, your brain is essentially priming itself with expectations based on your experience.”
He continues, “Aroma is usually what precedes the expectation for taste. For example, if you smell someone barbecuing, your mouth starts watering. You can almost taste the barbecue in the air, right? You’re already expecting that sweet, smoky, savory barbecue taste. Now, if you then tasted the food and someone had left the sugar out of the barbecue sauce, or replaced it with a high-intensity sweetener, you’ll know right away. Why, because your mind has already tricked you into expecting not only something sweet, but a specific type of sweetness.”
But as Drainville explains, these expectations can be used to your advantage.
“It’s pretty well known that certain volatile aroma compounds related to sweet products can boost sweetness. That is, even if they don’t contain any actual sugar.”
“Before you actually take a bite or sip of something, you’re already smelling it,” says Diaz.
“This means your retro-nasal olfactory system is already sending signals to your brain, even if your taste buds haven’t perceived it yet. If it’s a caramel, your brain primes you to expect that caramellic sweetness. So if there is some sugar or sweetness present, that experience and priming can help boost or enhance the perception.”
Drainville expounds on this, “From a development perspective if you just take out the sweetness it can be very evident. But if you can add authentic and exciting, sweet flavor profiles, it will enhance consumers’ sensory experience. And this is one of the major ways our sweetness enhancement technologies, like functional sweet brown profiles can bridge that gap.”
Still, she stresses that it’s not just about the perceived level of sweetness but also its quality.
Meeting Expectations: Enhancing the Quality of Sweetness
Improving Indulgence: Mouthfeel
As mentioned earlier, a major issue with reduced-sugar formulations is a decreased sense of overall indulgence.
A primary reason for this is mouthfeel. Rebuilding this is essential for improving indulgence and bringing the taste experience back in line with expectations.
This is one of the reasons our sweet brown profiles are more than flavors, but functional taste technologies.
Leveraging the building blocks of the authentic dairy taste synonymous with indulgence, these solutions can enhance richness, creaminess, and overall mouthfeel.
Yet, enhancing mouthfeel isn’t the only way our solutions help to improve the sweetness quality.
Sensory Timing
Sweetness Curve
“From a sensory perspective, quality is greatly impacted by the sweetness curve,” says Drainville.
“In other words, not just how much sweetness we perceive, but how strong and when we perceive it.”
“Naturally-occurring sugar molecules like sucrose have an intense initial peak and quickly recede. But as we discussed, because high-intensity sweeteners bind differently to our receptors, they sometimes have a later onset of sweetness and linger longer than sugar. This is along with metallic off-notes are why they can feel ‘artifcial’.”
She adds that in situations like this, cutting-edge technologies such as Edlong’s Sweet Spot™ can help clean this up and bring the reduced-sugar sweetness curve closer to that of sucrose. Moreover, it helps mask off-notes, improve mouthfeel, and enhance sweetness perception by boosting the existing sugar in a formulation.
To demonstrate this in action, N.C. State conducted a paired comparison study comparing unflavored iced tea to one with Edlong’s taste technologies. The results demonstrated that iced tea containing Edlong’s taste technologies had a sweeter, thicker perception for consumers than unflavored iced tea. This was achieved without any added sugar, fat, gums, or texturizers.
Paired with our Functional Sweet Browns or other custom solutions, Sweet Spot can help a wide range of reduced-sugar applications.
Vasquez believes that in markets with strict labeling regulations, such as Mexico’s, these solutions can be game changers.
“In Mexico, this technology has proved extremely effective in yogurt, puddings, flavored milks, breads, and especially products for kids. Combining Sweet Spot with characterizing profiles really highlights what is possible with sugar reductions.”
Diaz goes further, adding, “Finding the right combination of these technologies and creating custom solutions is a key part of any strategy. This is because optimizing sensory in sugar-reduction is not only about sweetness. It’s also about the timing and release of flavors and their impact on the complete sensory experience.”
Flavor Release
“We have several different ways to analyze the sensory experience in our customers’ products. One is temporal dominance of sensation testing. This tracks the dominant sensations you’re feeling throughout a given taste experience.”
Continuing, he adds, “So when you’re trying to cover up the lingering aftertaste or mask off-notes, we’re able to know when and where that’s needed. For example, to cover up the effects of a sweetener, maybe we will increase the taste of sweet caramel. But now, although the ‘artificial’ sweetness is tempered, the caramel is now outlasting the sweetness. And that wasn’t what you were looking for. Based on that data, we can go back and tweak the formula and adjust the compounds responsible for each sensation. This way, we can get the timing of sweetness, sensory, and other sensations to properly align with consumer expectations.”
Diaz makes it clear that what this looks like varies from application to application and from customer to customer.
It’s why he stresses that in addition to a strong base in sensory, collaboration is key to successful sugar reduction.
Collaboration for Sugar Reduction Success
The need for sugar reduction might be universal, but that doesn’t mean there is a one-size-fits-all approach.
Far from it.
Each of our customers’ products has different needs, goals, and expectations. Most of all, they have different starting points.
Someone trying to reduce sugar in a decadent dessert requires a different solution than a high-protein, low-sugar beverage.
Processing, ingredients, and packaging can all impact the consumer’s experience of the product.
As we’ve illustrated in detail, successful sugar reduction is less about sweetness and more about the full sensory experience.
We have the authentic, indulgent flavor profiles and innovative taste technologies needed to help you hit a sensory home run.
But again, we’re not looking to offer a one-size-fits-all strategy. Unlocking the true power of Edlong’s taste technologies and sensory expertise is through our tailored sugar-reduction solutions.
We believe collaborating with our partners from the start helps redefine what is possible for your reduced-sugar formulations.
With rapid iteration and an international team of experts, we help meet regulations, exceed expectations, faster and more indulgently than you ever thought possible.
Find out how Edlong can help you hit the sweet spot in your next sugar-reduction project.
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