Forget cutting sugar—new tech makes it healthier instead

The chocolate would look and taste normal, and contain the same amount of sugar. But an enzyme, encased in an edible substance and added to the bar, would reduce how much sugar is absorbed into the bloodstream, and even turn it into a fiber that is good for your gut.

The product is the brainchild of scientists at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. In 2018, Kraft Heinz tapped the scientists to help develop a sugar substitute that would enable the food giant to cut the sweetener from its food without losing its benefits. The scientists had a different idea—save the sugar but devise a way to make it healthier.

“The problem is not the sugar itself," says Sam Inverso, director of business development partnerships at the Wyss Institute. “The problem is that we eat too much sugar."

The sugar-to-fiber enzyme is among the latest technologies dreamed up to deal with America’s sugar habit without ditching sugar itself. Another fix involves a drink mix containing microscopic sponges that soak up sugar in the stomach at mealtime. Even researchers still working to reduce sugar are peddling new technologies, like individual sugar crystals modified to dissolve more quickly in the mouth, making food taste sweeter.

Some sugar occurs naturally in our foods, like fruit and dairy products. But much of it is added by manufacturers to processed food and drinks, such as cereal and soda. U.S. regulators in recent years have begun cracking down on added sugar, in 2016 requiring food and beverage makers to disclose on nutrition labels how much sugar has been added to products. Regulators this year put limits on added sugar in school meals and are weighing a requirement that food high in substances like sugar must say so on the front of their packaging.

“Sugar is the new tobacco," says Steve Young, managing partner at private-equity firm Manna Tree Partners, which invests in food companies.

Food and beverage companies are ramping up work on new products with little to no added sugar—and trying to reduce it in existing ones—as consumers grow more aware of its ubiquity, including in unexpected foods like salad dressing and condiments, Young says.

Artificial sweeteners such as aspartame, the key ingredient in Diet Coke, came into vogue years ago as a fix for calorie-conscious consumers, but scrutiny over their safety has dented their popularity. More recently, some food companies have sought to replace sugar with natural ingredients like stevia and monk fruit, which are so sweet that they can add flavor without contributing calories.

But slashing sugar has run into roadblocks. Sugar does more than just sweeten food. It acts as a preservative, while adding texture, bulk and, often, a caramel color when heated. Alternative sweeteners can come with an aftertaste, and some substitutes don’t work because their intensity means they are needed in smaller quantities, to the point of making the food itself smaller. “If you were to take the sugar out of a brownie, you don’t have much left," Young says.

Reducing sugar often requires retooling decades-old recipes, and substitutes can entail higher costs, regulatory hurdles or consumer backlash.

Kraft Heinz, for instance, has pledged to cut 60 million pounds of sugar from its products by 2025. The company in 2022 launched a major renovation of its juice drink, Capri Sun, cutting sugar across its original varieties by an average of 40% and swapping in monk fruit instead. Many consumers didn’t like the change, and sales of the product weakened. The company is now adding back in some sugar.

Enter the Wyss Institute’s plan to lessen sugar’s harmful effects. Its enzyme, used by plants to create stalks, is encased in spherical nanoparticles—tiny mesh-like cages made of pectin that allow the enzyme to be added to food without being activated until it reaches the intestine. Once there, a change in pH causes the cage to expand, freeing the enzyme to float through its holes and start converting sugar to fiber.

The Wyss Institute’s goal for its enzyme product was to reduce the sugar absorbed from food by 30%, though it has the potential to remove even more than that, Inverso says.

The enzyme’s ability to turn sugar into fiber is also key, as most Americans don’t get nearly enough fiber in their diet, says Adama Sesay, a senior engineer at the Wyss Institute who worked on the project.

After initial funding, Kraft Heinz is no longer financing the project. The Wyss Institute is now licensing the technology to a company to help bring its enzyme product to market, a process that entails additional testing and work to secure regulatory approval. Inverso says that the aim is for the product to be available to U.S. food manufacturers within the next two years, and that other encapsulated enzymes could follow: products that reduce lactose absorption after drinking milk, or cut gluten after eating bread.

For now the enzyme works better in solid food than in a liquid. Producing it in large quantities and at low cost is still a ways off—currently it’s 100 times more expensive than raw sugar, Inverso says.

Kraft Heinz is evaluating possible applications for the enzyme, though it won’t have ownership or exclusive rights to it, according to John Topinka, an R&D lead at the company who spearheaded the collaboration with the Wyss Institute. The enzyme could be game-changing, he says, because it avoids one of the biggest challenges that comes with many alternative sweeteners: the need to significantly tweak the tried-and-true recipes behind iconic food brands.

Other companies are trying similar methods. San Francisco-based startup Biolumen recently launched a product called Monch Monch, a drink mix made of fibrous, microscopic sponges designed to soak up sugar and prevent it from reaching the bloodstream. At mealtime consumers can blend a teaspoon of Monch Monch, which has no taste, smell or color, into drinks from water to wine. Once it has reached the stomach, the sponges start to swell and sequester sugar, reducing its burden on the body, says Dr. Robert Lustig, Biolumen’s co-founder and chief medical officer.

Biolumen is still studying what ultimately happens to the sequestered sugar, Lustig says, adding that it is either chewed up by bacteria in the intestine, carried from the body in stools, or a little bit of both.

One gram of Monch Monch can sequester six grams of sugar, says Lustig, a neuroendocrinologist who for years has sounded alarms about added sugars. The product, introduced as a dietary supplement, can also be used as a food ingredient under a Food and Drug Administration principle known as “generally recognized as safe." Packets of Monch Monch are available for purchase online, and Biolumen says it is in talks with U.S. food manufacturers it declined to name about its use in other products.

Some people have raised concerns that the mix could cause gastrointestinal side effects like bloating or diarrhea, but clinical trials have shown no such issues, Lustig says. Biolumen underwrote two double-blind, placebo-controlled trials, carried out in India and Australia.

Similar concerns prompted a backlash years ago against the fat substitute Olestra, used in some of PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay chips. PepsiCo says those products have been discontinued, and it no longer uses the ingredient. Biolumen says its product works differently from Olestra. The Wyss Institute consulted with a gastroenterologist to determine how its enzyme product would affect digestion, Harvard’s Inverso says, adding that the product won’t create enough fiber to cause issues.

Jerold Mande, an adjunct professor of nutrition at Harvard who isn’t part of the sugar research, says he is for all using technology in food, but that the U.S. doesn’t have a sufficient system for ensuring the safety of many such products. “There are a lot that come in as dietary supplements," says Mande, a former official at FDA and the Agriculture Department. “They’re essentially unregulated."

Food companies are betting on other solutions for now. Cereal startup Magic Spoon uses allulose, a natural sugar found in figs and raisins that is growing in popularity, helped by FDA guidance that allows it to be excluded from sugar or added-sugar totals on nutrition labels. Ingredient company Tate & Lyle, which makes allulose from corn kernels, says the sweetener tastes like sugar and adds bulk and caramel color, but passes through the body without being metabolized.

The company says allulose is 70% as sweet as table sugar—or sucrose—making it a more direct sugar replacement compared with high-intensity sweeteners that can be up to 600 times as sweet.

Chicago-based Blommer Chocolate recently launched a line of reduced-sugar chocolate and confectionery products made with Incredo, a sugar that has been physically altered to taste sweeter using a mineral carrier that dissolves faster in saliva and targets the sweet-taste receptors on the tongue. Incredo’s use enables manufacturers to use up to 50% less sugar, the company says.

The best option for reducing the health toll of sugar? Nick Fereday, executive director of food and consumer trends for agricultural lender Rabobank, suggests eating less: “In food, we tend to look for complex solutions when there’s a simple one."

Write to Jesse Newman at jesse.newman@wsj.com