Microbially produced protein that is much sweeter than sugar

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-023-01865-x

by walterbell • 3 years ago

160 128 3 years ago

Sparkyte3• 3 years ago

That is pretty neat. I'm hoping for a better future for low carb snacks.

beebeepka4• 3 years ago

Sounds awful. All of the taste, none of the nutrition. Anything but moderation. We shouldn't be indulging the lack of moderation.

mhb• 3 years ago

Nothing stopping people from putting it on broccoli.

tchaffee4• 3 years ago

Folks with inherited diabetes do not have the option of moderation. You don't need to see this through such a narrow political lens. Some fermented nut-based vegan cheeses are healthier for the heart. Should we moan about that invention and insist on dairy based cheese, moderation, and less choice? No one is forcing you to use these new things.

exabyte2• 3 years ago

Yes but we've seen added sugar to be quite an addictive substance. People want to quit and it's difficult. You will feel the void of sugar. So if there's a healthy alternative that can reduce sugar. It is a highly valuable stepping stone where the success of it would be to make itself unnecessary (although still fun to use!) I think if it's natural and doesn't pose health risks that it sounds great.

Sparkyte3• 3 years ago

We eat too many carbs you can get nutrition from food without carbs. Just American processed food focuses on salts, carbs and other filler.

Salt is a filler for flavors where spices and herbs can be used because it is cheaper.

Carbs are used because it makes you feel full quick. Where protein will make you feel full after digestion.

America's culture of max min profit is annoying.

TylerE4• 3 years ago

Everything in moderation, including moderation. You're allowed to live a little once in a while.

abainbridge2• 3 years ago

I'm not sure artificial sweeteners are good for anything.

A 2019 meta analysis published in the British Medical Journal said, "Most health outcomes did not seem to have differences between the NSS (Non-sugar sweeteners) exposed and unexposed groups." - https://www.bmj.com/content/364/bmj.k4718

A few months ago, "WHO advises not to use non-sugar sweeteners for weight control in newly released guideline" - https://www.who.int/news/item/15-05-2023-who-advises-not-to-...

My guess is that things tasting sweet is part of the problem. For example:

"Ingestion of these artificial sweeteners (AS) results in the release of insulin from pancreas which is mistaken for glucose (due to their sweet taste). This increases the levels of insulin in blood eventually leading to decreased receptor activity due to insulin resistance." - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7014832/

And:

"the role of sweet taste in energy intake and appetite regulation is controversial" - https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/6/9/3431

haldujai2• 3 years ago

Respectfully, overstated conclusions you’re drawing from these limited studies.

Ref[1]: Of the few studies identified for each outcome, most had few participants, were of short duration, and their methodological and reporting quality was limited; therefore, confidence in the reported results is limited.

Ref[2] only states NSS should not be used in weight control due to a lack of long term evidence (I.e. if trying to achieve weight control there are better strategies, not necessarily a condemnation) as well as: Because the link observed in the evidence between NSS and disease outcomes might be confounded by baseline characteristics of study participants and complicated patterns of NSS use, the recommendation has been assessed as conditional, following WHO processes for developing guidelines. This signals that policy decisions based on this recommendation may require substantive discussion in specific country contexts, linked for example to the extent of consumption in different age groups.

Ref[2]’s full WHO review article[5] is even more damning on the methodology. Pertinent to your arguments: The results suggest that, in the short term, NSS use may lead to small reductions in adiposity without any significant impact on cardiometabolic risk. There is suggestion of negative health effects with long-term use, but the evidence is ultimately inconclusive.

Ref[3] is obviated by ref[2] and meaningless in isolation, reasons described in the 200 page WHO report.

Ref[4] is theoretical about mechanisms and provides no empiric evidence of anything. Contrary to this hypothesis the WHO study elaborates on why the long-term observational studies are discordant with short-term RCTs and the gist is bias.

[5] https://apps.who.int/iris/rest/bitstreams/1417548/retrieve

bigmattystyles• 3 years ago

How do they come with these quantifications that something is 3000 sweeter than sugar. What does that even mean? Cool find though, I hope it works - in the past it's seemed that while you may be able to fool your tongue, your stomach and brain are not so easily fooled.

shawnz• 3 years ago

I'm guessing they mean that it's detectable by humans at a 3000x lower concentration than sugar.

trevortheblack• 3 years ago

I imagine it's the same way they measure scoville units.

It's sensitivity.

How much of the substance is required for a group of people to consistently correctly guess which of two identical water glasses have been spiked with the substance.

If it's like this then 1/3000 is required compared to sugar.

az2264• 3 years ago

Maybe they used 1/3000 the quantity of sugar and people rated each sample to be equally sweet.

Edit: it is based on weight compared to sucrose [1], so I happened to be right!

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC549512/

stubish• 3 years ago

Could be the size of the molecule that will activate the relevant taste receptors, or the number of active molecules in a given volume of product, or given weight.

CPLX• 3 years ago

It’s either 3000x sweeter by volume or number of calories per X amount of sweetness.

I’m pretty sure it’s the latter but it doesn’t seem easy to Google.

tsimionescu• 3 years ago

It's actually by weight, not by volume.

As a fun note, by calories, aspartame would be infinitely sweeter than sugar, since it has 0 calories.

fbdab1032• 3 years ago

Just as a point of reference, aspartame is considered to be 150-200x sweeter than sugar.

355ml Coke Cola has 39grams of sugar

355ml Diet Coke has 0.2grams of aspartame

If the new compound was a 1-to-1 replacement, a putative Sweelin Coke would have 0.013grams (13mgs) of sweetener.

fbdab1032• 3 years ago

The company has tested sweelin in a range of foods, achieving a 70% reduction in the sugar content of ketchup and a 50% reduction in that of chocolate, for example, without changing palatability.

Why can they not replace 100% of the sugar? For their top line advertisement, feels like there is some gotcha that prevents total sugar substitution.

altintx• 3 years ago

You often need the chemical properties of sugar to maintain texture. It’s not just a question of flavor or sweetness.

az2264• 3 years ago

You don’t need sugar for textural reasons for either chocolate or ketchup. It almost surely has to do with taste.

idle_zealot• 3 years ago

You can get ketchup and chocolate without any sugar at all.

az2264• 3 years ago

Probably has to do with palatability. Like how full sugar Coke tastes great and zero calorie Coke tastes terrible. The half sugar half stevia Coke tastes better than zero calorie but worse than full sugar. They probably tested each food and detected the inflection point where taste scores started suffering.

silisili2• 3 years ago

Maybe it's Stockholm Syndrome of some type after years on the stuff, but I've come to love the taste of zero calorie drinks, and find the originals odd and unpalatable. Hard to explain, it's like they are thicker/syrupy? Even Mexican Coke.

gavinray• 3 years ago

FWIW, I prefer the taste of Coke Zero and Pepsi Max to regular Coke/Pepsi.

My wife had never tried Coke Zero before we met and she also prefers it now.

Not sure what they use in these alternatives but Diet Coke/Pepsi taste pretty bad so it must be a starkly different artificial sweetener.

Johnny555• 3 years ago

Probably because even though it tastes like sugar, it doesn't behave like sugar, which has a more active role in baked goods than as a simple flavoring agent.

https://bakerbettie.com/function-of-sugar-in-baking/

eternityforest2• 3 years ago

Seems like we have like 800 natural and artificial gums, flours, emulsifiers, etc, some of which are even occasionally considered health food ingredients, and most almost all of which seems healthier than sugar, why not use those for the baking texture if you're going to use the fake sugar for sweetness?

AdamH12113• 3 years ago

Sugar substitutes can differ from actual sugar in several ways. The sweetness may take longer to be detected, it may stick around longer (aftertaste), and there may be other, bitter flavors in addition to the sweetness. As others have mentioned, sugar also has various technical roles in food, such as softening baked goods and acting as a preservative.

gizmo686• 3 years ago

In addition to health and digestive issue, artificial sweateners normally have 2 significant issues:

1) Taste is about how molecules bind to taste receptors on yhe tongue. Just because a sweatener binds to the sweet receptors, doesn't mean it won't also bind to other receptors. This gives them a different flavor profile than sugar, which needs to be balanced in the overall recipe.

2) Sugar does more than just bind to receptors on your tongue. Mix confectioner's sugar into water and you a glaze. It is still just sugar, but has a distinct look and feel. Or, just coat your confection with powdered sugar directly. It is the same surgar, but produces a completely different sensation in your mouth.

In baking, sugar tends to make food softer. In sauces, it acts as a thickener.

agrajag• 3 years ago

According to this article[1] from 2022 at higher concentrations it has a reduced sweetness response and leaves a lingering sweet taste. Supplementing it with real sugar means they don’t need to go to higher concentrations.

[1] https://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Article/2022/12/02/Amai-Pr...

KerryJones• 3 years ago

This is cool, but I've been using Allulose as sugar has some specific properties (such as rising dough, preservative, etc.) that are pretty important and lost with other properties, and it's low-carb. What's the advantages?

seer2• 3 years ago

A lot of the time when I crave sweet things its not for the sweet taste itself that I’m after, but for the sugar itself - e.g. after / during a long day with lots of learning new things / making decisions / tough algorithmic work etc.

I’m after the mood boost that sugar itself provide, the quickening of thinking that you get from it. Eating substitutions for me kinda misses the point, like if they replaced 50% of it, I’ll just need to consume twice the amount to get the same effect.

Also I’ve noticed that at least for me if I live active enough life (cycle to the office) and eat sweets during the day when I actually need it most, I can eat them every day and it will not negatively affect my body. Though I still try to make sure not to do that of course :)

Its just that I honestly don’t get the whole search for sugar replacements. I guess the idea would be that if you’re addicted to sugar, having a substitute would allow you to wane off of it more easily, kinda like a nicotine patch?

But still I would use sugar for its other properties not the sweetness itself, so what would I replace it with?

jiggawatts• 3 years ago

I’m in the same camp, but I avoid sucrose like the plague because of the fructose content.

Instead I’ll drink a latte (lactose) or eat something like a gummy bear (glucose).

I actually wish someone would make 100% glucose lollies with no added sucrose, but they all seem to have some.

viciousvoxel• 3 years ago

Most drugstores carry all-glucose tablets for diabetics.

runeks3• 3 years ago

What's wrong with fructose? Surely not all fruit is unhealthy.

solumunus• 3 years ago

Less people would be addicted to sugar if the products they ate included less added sugar. Quite simple.

adrianN• 3 years ago

Would they still be less addicted to sugar if we replaced it with artificial sweeteners? Is the addiction to the sugar molecule or to sweetness?

tourmalinetaco4• 3 years ago

If you make someone addicted to sweetness, then they will crave sweetness in whatever form they can get. Including real and fake sugars. Quite simple.

bigfudge2• 3 years ago

They won’t necessarily eat fewer calories though. Not least because they will become accustomed to eating very sweet food. My prediction is that this is likely to worsen the obesity epidemic rather than help it. The solutions to overweight are fairly clear at this point. They involve removing the financial incentives for multinational firms to sell us processed food.

FreshStart• 3 years ago

The carbcandle that burns twice as bright might be only burning half as long?

kjksf4• 3 years ago

This thing is a protein, not a carb.

Sugar is glucose and carbs are converted to glucose. Glucose leads to production of insulin. Too much glucose leads to too much insulin production which leads to diabetes. Diabetes is basically "you have too much insulin in your body" disease.

Protein builds your muscles and bones.

Sugar bad. Carb bad. Protein (and fat) good.

acchow• 3 years ago

You are not their target market.

The average American consumes 17 teaspoons of sugar per day. Because the average American doesn’t like the taste of most processed foods unless it is sweetened significantly.

Look at savory snacks like crackers - even those are loaded with sugar.

Take something like Wheat Thins Tomato and Basil flavor. Sounds savory? A 30g serving has 4g sugar. Yes, a savory snack consisting of 13.3% sugar.

albertopv• 3 years ago

* deleted

TylerE4• 3 years ago

Tomato is a fruit. Most fruits have quite a bit of sugar in them. So no, it isn't surprising that tomato soup has sugar in it.

joshspankit2• 3 years ago

You are not their target market.

I’m actually not sure about that.

I feel like there is a significant demographic who (for example) drinks coca cola as a “pick me up” (aka energy boost/mood regulation if they’re addicted).

In my own case, I’m much more likely to get on the sugar train if I have not slept properly and I’m trying to claw my way through the day.

chronogram• 3 years ago

Countries are having huge costs, financial and societal, by having people with diabetes, obesity and dental decay. The concern is not with Bob bringing a banana on a bike ride.

tourmalinetaco4• 3 years ago

The concern SHOULD be with the food industry that created this problem.

quantumsequoia• 3 years ago

I’m after the mood boost that sugar itself provide, the quickening of thinking that you get from it.

This is a myth, studies show "sugar rush" is just a placebo. Unless you are diabetic and have low blood sugar, eating sugar will not affect your mood, energy levels, or behavior any more than a placebo

koonsolo2• 3 years ago

Reminds me of a discussion I had with someone who also ran a 10 miles just like me. He said: "Yeah, at the midpoint I had low energy, but then I ate some dextrose and instantly had energy again".

I thought to myself "You probably should have taken it at the start of the race".

But hey, placebos do work of course, so I didn't want to crush his dream :D.

blackhaz• 3 years ago

Can confirm. I am (was) really, really addicted to sweets. I thought I couldn't function without them. Coke Zero/Pepsi Max are doing wonders for me. I'm 40+ years of age, drinking about 2-4 cans a day and went down from 101 kg obese BMI to 79 kg normal BMI in a few months just by removing excess sugar and a little calorie counting. No effort whatsoever, and the zero-free sodas cover most of my "sugar" requirements.

seer2• 3 years ago

Can you point to the studies please? Would be curious to check them out.

I have experimented quite a lot during the years and sugar (sucrose) for me definitely has positive effect.

I’ve tried tea, other things to eat, even gluten stuff, and sugar sweets was the only thing that made me retain my decision making focus state at the 16:00 lul ours where you still have a few hours to work, but don’t “feel” like it.

When I care more about me than the company’s well being I just accept that I will not be very productive then, but if there is a crunch and I really do care about the project, I can hack it with some sweets.

Maybe it is a placebo, but as long as its not too unhealthy… there are worse ways to live one’s life.

I mean most of the time I would be able to hack it if I really wanted to without sweets. Its just focusing on things gets a lot easier with the sugar. But I do not get overly active if I’m in a stable state, just get more to “normal” when I’ve exhausted my mind with mental work.

runeks3• 3 years ago

Sugar is energy to the body, or at least it metabolizes into something that is. It may not affect mood or behavior, but it surely affects energy levels.

jokethrowaway• 3 years ago

Fascinating! I consume zero sugar (not even from fruit) and if I occasionally do, I don't feel different in any way.

When I used to eat sugar I did a few weird things (like drinking squash raw, without mixing it with water, I had no idea I was supposed to do that) but never felt different because of it.

When I was going to sugar was to cope with life / depression. It was kind of an addiction, not unlike alcohol.

joshspankit2• 3 years ago

A lot of the time when I crave sweet things its not for the sweet taste itself that I’m after, but for the sugar itself

Now I’m curious (though HN is not the platform for getting closure on this): Have you experimented with consuming the same amount of sugar in capsule form so that you get the dosage with absolutely no mouth sensation?

readthenotes1• 3 years ago

As a sugar addict, I have to say: making my addiction less toxic won't make me less addicted.

potamic• 3 years ago

While we wait for the inevitable news about how this sweetener is harmful, I can't help but think why we don't have a non-controversial sweetener yet. There are hundreds and hundreds of food additives available in the market which are used everywhere. Many of these are compounds not found naturally and new to the human diet. You would expect any safety concerns arising to be sort of uniformly distributed across different classes of additives, purely from a statistical point of view. And yet sweeteners seem to take the brunt of it. What gives?

userbinator• 3 years ago

The sugar industry doesn't like competition?

Roark662• 3 years ago

Isn't stevia non controversial? It's essentially a plant extract.

Personally my problem with sweeteners is twofold. First, they are massively overused (especially in drinks). Second sugar adds more than just sweetness. It thickens the texture a little. I've never encountered this being replicated properly in products that use sweeteners instead.

theogravity• 3 years ago

It's non-controversial but it does not taste like cane sugar, although it is sweet. I wouldn't replace a recipe calling for cane sugar with stevia in most cases. The taste is not the same.

lost_tourist• 3 years ago

It's also far less studied than sucralose, aspartame, ace-k, and saccharin

ImHereToVote• 3 years ago

just eat some Glycine and Inositol. Sweet like sugar.

bigfudge2• 3 years ago

Perhaps these are larger volume additives so get better studied. Perhaps a similarly high fraction of all additives would be found harmful if they were more studied, or the studies were easier to run?

dtech• 3 years ago

Wouldn't this have the same problem as other non-sugar sweeteners? I think one of the main arguments against Aspartame is that it still invokes an insulin response, so still has a lot of the negative side effects of sugar intake, even if it doesn't have calories.

callalex• 3 years ago

There is little supported evidence that aspartame causes any meaningful insulin response.

tmikaeld5• 3 years ago

In summary;

- Sweet protein, 3000x sweeter than sugar

- Same texture/consistency as sugar.

- Can be baked (modified to be temperature stable)

- Unlikely to affect insulin and gut flora.

- Breaks down into common amino acids.

- Produced through fermentation (cheap & scalable).

- Indistinguishable taste profile compared to sugar (according to taste experts)

- May be on the market 2023 (if approved)

Here, take all my money!!

ksec• 3 years ago

Here, take all my money!!

Yes, except when something is too good to be true I tends to be very skeptical of it.

While it would great if FDA approves it, I generally take the EU perspective in terms of Food Safety.

At the same time I am also wondering, if this works, may be it is time to tax Sugar?

ThePowerOfFuet• 3 years ago

Multiple countries already tax soft drinks containing sugar.

joker_minmax2• 3 years ago

If it's 3000 times sweeter, you still have to modify your usage of it in a recipe, even if the texture is the same. So your end product might have a different texture because of that quantity difference during the substitution.

toomuchtodo• 3 years ago

Also probably doesn’t damage dna like sucralose/Splenda.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10937404.2023.2...

mgaunard2• 3 years ago

Most American snacks and drinks taste sickeningly sweet. The right thing to do is throw them in the bin.

Eat and drink real stuff instead, with no sugar added. Even an orange joice is naturally extremely sweet.

cyber_kinetist• 3 years ago

Note that the reason fruits nowadays are so sweet is because of artificial selection done over millenia - fruits thousands of years ago barely resembled the fruits that we eat today. [0] "Natural" fruit was originally absolute shit for human consumption, so humans have cultivated it until it became abnormally large and rich with sugars. (And orange juice is no more healthier than other competing sugar-fueled junk foods - they all have the dangerously high diabetes-inducing sugar content, and it's not good for your health!)

Don't care if we're using the good-old "manual pollination" technique or high-tech genetic modification - the fact that the crops we eat has been modified extensively until it doesn't resemble the original has been true for the whole existence of human civilization. Nowadays what people call natural "real" food is just a simulacra - a copy of a real thing that doesn't exist anymore. I think people should be more willing to accept this reality if we're going to survive the Anthropocene (with all that climate change jazz) - we as a species have always changed and terraformed Earth and its various flora/fauna throughout millenia, and there is no going back to its original "real" state anymore.

[0] https://firstwefeast.com/eat/2014/10/infographic-the-drastic...

fragmede• 3 years ago

After humanity dies off or is moribund from the catastrophic effects of global warming, Earth, and its various remaining flora/fauna will revert back to a more natural state, until, after a millennia of healing, it gets unperverted by humanity's touch, and grain and fruit is once again, terrible for human consumption. Which would matter, if there were humans left.

TylerE4• 3 years ago

Sugar is where the body gets energy. Obviously people growing crops for food favor crops that provide the same amount of energy for less work and land.

XorNot4• 3 years ago

Orange juice has the exact same amount of sugar as coke, volume for volume.

Juice is not a healthy choice in anyway that really matters and you will get diabetes from it.

sacnoradhq2• 3 years ago

Look again. OJ has more calories per unit volume. 13.75 kcal / oz vs. 11.66.

navigate8310• 3 years ago

Are you talking about home pressed orange juice or the tetrapaks?

koonsolo2• 3 years ago

The Europeans that I know that moved to US always complain about the bread. They can't find any decent bread that isn't sweetened.

mgaunard2• 3 years ago

Bread is flour, yeast and water. If you add sugar it's brioche.

indus• 3 years ago

Seeing innovations like these warms me up and sweetens my day.

toshk4• 3 years ago

"could put a dent in the global metabolic disease and obesity epidemic"

We've had artificial sweeteners for decades, a better one won't make the difference.

Fact that such a statement is still made in a publication in nature and goes unchallenged means that even the scientific community has a fundamentally wrong view on the obesity crisis.

tmikaeld5• 3 years ago

It's not about safeness, it's about taste, cheapness, metabolism and gut. A protein is by far better than a synthetic one on all accounts (apparently).

toshk4• 3 years ago

The point is, why do we think going heavier on the sugar-free product strategy is going to provide any solutions when it's clearly not made a dent in the last 20 years since light products became prevalent?

Even WHO makes such claims: https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/15/health/who-sweeteners-wei...

runeks3• 3 years ago

Based on reading comments here, it seems the general overuse of sugar has made people forget that sugar in adequate amounts at appropriate times is good for you. If you have low blood sugar because you just ran five miles, eating sugar — and thus inducing an insulin response which replenishes the energy of your muscle cells — is a good thing.

Sitting on your ass all day eating sugar, however, is not.

brmgb• 3 years ago

Or we could, you know, cap the amount of sugar in products by law or introduce a tax on added sugar. Just seems simpler. Plus it’s working in the EU.

joker_minmax2• 3 years ago

I'd like to see more studying on this. I thought all sweet tasting things impacted your body's release of insulin in some regard because of your taste buds in your intestine? There is a lot of conflicting information on this topic overall. Also they told us aspartame was safe because it's just two amino acids, but look at what they're saying now. The production process and purity of the final product matters in some cases more than the actual chemical at hand.

Microbially produced protein that is much sweeter than sugar

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