HOME & LIVING
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2021
THE OBSERVER & BAKER CITY HERALD — B3
SUGAR
Continued from Page B1
According to makers
of sugar substitutes, Big
Sugar has good reason
to worry. But among the
would-be challengers, taste
isn’t the only problem to
solve: price is an issue, too.
Allulose
Most prominent among
alternative sweeteners is
a rare type of sugar called
allulose. First discovered
in wheat in the 1940s,
it’s one-third less sweet
than sugar, but it also has
one-tenth the calories. In
2019, the FDA said allu-
lose could be removed
from the “added sugar”
line on “nutrition facts”
labels because, unlike
sucrose, which is quickly
broken down by enzymes
and turned into glucose,
most allulose is excreted in
urine, meaning it doesn’t
signifi cantly impact blood
sugar levels. Another ben-
efi t is that it doesn’t pro-
mote bacteria growth,
which can cause cavities.
Tate & Lyle, a $3 bil-
lion food and beverage
ingredient supplier, makes
a version of allulose that’s
“non-GMO Project ver-
ifi ed” so as to appeal to
food brands marketing
themselves to health and
environmentally con-
scious consumers. The
sweetener is already found
in a wide range of pack-
aged foods, such as cake
mixes and cookies. It’s
also used in candies such
as Smart Sweets’ popular
gummy bears and low-carb
bread sold by the SOLA
Company.
“Consumers are now
actually looking at sugar
and added sugar with as
much importance as total
calories,” said Abigail
Storms, global head of spe-
cialty sweeteners at Tate &
Lyle. Demand has swelled
of late, she said, because of
a pandemic proclivity for
snack foods and ice cream,
and due to interest in the
“keto” diet — which pre-
scribes an extremely low
carbohydrate count.
However, the expense
of production may be an
obstacle to mass adoption.
Though found naturally in
Marko Pekic/E+/Getty Images-TNS
According to a recent survey by market research fi rm Euromonitor, 37% of consumers globally are looking for products with no sugar, no
added sugar or low sugar.
some plants, making allu-
lose in bulk requires it be
produced mostly from corn
in a complex chemical
reaction. It’s a hurdle other
types of sweeteners must
overcome as well.
Incredo
Made by Tel Aviv, Isra-
el-based DouxMatok,
Incredo is a reengineered
version of sucrose touted as
sweeter than the original.
Though it still has the same
potential health problems
that fl ow from sucrose, less
of it is needed to sweeten
foods the same way.
About 80% of what
humans consider sweet-
ness in sugar is lost on
them. Sugar molecules are
tightly bound — most fail
to interact with taste buds
during chewing. Doux-
Matok said it’s managed
to insert tiny silica gran-
ules (a common food addi-
tive used in baking) into
sucrose, which enables
more sugar to spread
out and be tasted before
swallowing.
Two years ago, Doux-
Matok sent a sample to
Lior Lev Sercarz, owner
of La Boîte, a spice shop
in Manhattan. Sercarz said
he had already been on the
hunt for a sugar substitute
that didn’t sacrifi ce fl avor,
and DouxMatok seemed to
fi t the bill. “We didn’t have
to add anything else to
compensate,” he said.
David Tsivion, Doux-
Matok’s chief technology
offi cer, said the company
is hoping to land contracts
with U.S. food manufac-
turers that produce cookies
and spreads. But fi rst, the
company needs to reach
price parity with sugar.
Wholesale refi ned beet
sugar averages .37 cents
per pound in America.
DouxMatok won’t share
what the pricing for his
product is, but said it’s
defi nitely higher.
Supplant
Supplant is on the other
end of the spectrum —
it’s less sweet, according
to company founder Tom
Simmons. His goal isn’t
to replace table sugar —
he wants to replace it in
everyday food products.
Cambridge, England-
based Supplant grinds left-
over fi ber from plant waste,
such as corn cobs, oat
fi bers and wheat bran, and
then applies an enzymatic
process to break it down
into a dry white powder.
The resulting product has
similarities to sucrose but
is lower in calories and
slower to raise blood sugar
levels, Simmons said. Like
sucrose, it includes small
chains called disaccha-
rides which allow it to bake
and taste like sugar. And
because it’s made from
plant waste, it includes pre-
biotic fi ber, which helps
slow the body’s absorption
of carbohydrates.
“Sugar reduction in
drinks was solved 40 years
ago with diet soda. But for
food products it was an
unsolved problem,” he said.
“What we want to push
back on is extensive use of
white refi ned [sugar] that’s
fl ooding the food system.”
But to do that, you need
something that outper-
forms traditional sugar in
bulk, browning and cara-
melization. Chef Thomas
Keller, owner of Per Se in
New York City and The
French Laundry in Healds-
burg, California, said he’s
been testing Supplant for
the past year and a half.
“These things are very
intriguing for chefs,” he
said. “We’re constantly
looking for ways to make
[food] more nutritious.”
When he fi rst tried to
entirely swap traditional
sugar for Supplant, he said
it was a “real struggle.” His
test vehicle was a short-
bread cookie he’s been
making for 27 years. The
version he sells today at
Bouchon Bakery in Yount-
ville, California, uses a
50-50 blend of Supplant
and sugar. But Keller still
views it as a success: “If
everyone was eating half
the sugar they eat today…
that changes the world.”
Another baker testing
Supplant is Angela Diaz,
owner of You’re a Cookie,
a direct-to-consumer
bakery out of Chicago.
At fi rst, she was skep-
tical. “I’m not a big fan
of replacement sugars
because they leave an
aftertaste,” she said. Sup-
plant however “leaves
no aftertaste,” she said,
adding that it worked well
in melted fats or oils. But
when baking her cookies,
she also needed to mix
it with regular white or
brown sugar.
Supplant and Incredo
are both racing to win over
customers, but neither is
close to allulose when it
comes to market pene-
tration. During the pan-
demic, London-based Tate
& Lyle ran into produc-
tion diffi culties because
of high demand, a situa-
tion that could repeat itself
if a potential U.S. cus-
tomer approves its use. The
quality standards team at
Amazon-owned Whole
Foods is currently evalu-
ating whether to allow the
sale of products containing
allulose, a Whole Foods
Market spokesperson said.
Allulose is “Gener-
ally Recognized as Safe”
(GRAS) by the FDA, a
status based on submis-
sions by the manufacturer
and outside experts — not
formal government studies.
DouxMatok, a combination
of traditional sugar and
silica, already has GRAS
status, and Supplant is
seeking it, too. In the Euro-
pean Union, however, allu-
lose still awaits approval as
a “novel ingredient,” which
requires scientifi c review.
Comprehensive or inde-
pendent medical studies
of these sugar alternatives
is largely lacking. Doux-
Matok hasn’t done any
studies backing the safety
of its ingredient and Sup-
plant said it’s done one
small clinical trial. Its data,
the company said, showed
that consumption of its
product triggered a 15%
lower glycemic response
than sugar.
Dr. Michael Greger, a
physician and author of
nutrition books including
“How Not to Diet,” said
allulose may be the most
promising candidate to
replace sugar, but “we just
don’t have a lot of good
human studies that put it to
the test.” As a result, he’s
not ready to recommend it
for human consumption.
Another medical expert
said the entire debate may
be a false one, since imi-
tation sugar could end up
being just as bad for you.
Dr. Robert Lustig, a
pediatric endocrinologist
at the University of Cal-
ifornia at San Francisco,
said it’s still unknown
whether putting any-
thing sweet on a human
tongue sends the same
message to the brain. It’s
possible, he said, that an
insulin response is trig-
gered regardless of it being
sucrose or a substitute. The
pancreas controls insulin
response, and that controls
weight gain, he explained.
“All of these compa-
nies are running around
trying to fi gure out what
to do to mitigate the neg-
ative eff ects,” said Lustig.
“The right answer is to
de-sweeten our lives.”
Safety and side eff ects of COVID-19 vaccinations for kids
BY JASON HOWLAND
Mayo Clinic News Network
With 28 million more
children in the U.S. now
eligible to be vaccinated
for COVID-19, parents of
kids 5-11 may still have
questions about the vac-
cine and if it’s safe for
younger children. Dr. Tina
Ardon, a Mayo Clinic
family medicine physi-
cian, says that it is safe to
vaccinate children 5-11 for
COVID-19.
“The COVID-19 vac-
cine is extremely safe for
our children. We have a
number of studies that rep-
resent that we’ve had a
number of children already
received the vaccines, and
we have been able to mon-
itor those children closely.
And we feel very confi dent
this is a safe and eff ective
vaccine,” says Dr. Ardon.
Dr. Ardon, who is a
mother of young children
herself, says it’s under-
standable that some par-
ents may be wary of a vac-
cine that’s been developed
in a relatively short period
of time, but they should
not feel that it’s any less
safe because of that.
“I think it’s important
to remember we had
a wealth of informa-
tion about mRNA vac-
cines already under our
belt before the pandemic
started. So this helped
speed up a lot of that ini-
tial research,” she says.
“This is an example as
well of how we get every-
body, all hands on deck,
everyone working as hard
as they can to get a really
important vaccine avail-
able for our patients. A
lot of the bureaucratic red
tape, some of the time-
lines that we normally
see were just eliminated
because we knew this was
so important. The parts of
the process that are truly
important not to cut cor-
ners were certainly done
exactly the way they
needed to be. The time-
lines to administer the
vaccines, to follow the side
eff ects afterward, to ana-
lyze that data ― all that
was done extremely appro-
priately. There were no
corners cut.”
She says the COVID-19
vaccines are similar to
other childhood vaccina-
tions regarding how they
are administered and the
potential side eff ects.
“The COVID-19 vac-
cines, in a lot of ways,
are no diff erent than the
other vaccines we have
available. They’re admin-
istered in the same way,
either in the arm or in the
leg, depending on the age
of the child. The doses are
appropriate for the age of
the child, as well. There’s
no special follow-up
that has to happen after
receiving a COVID-19
vaccine. And the side
eff ects are quite similar to
other vaccines, including
fever, muscle aches — but
most likely pain, redness
and swelling at the injec-
tion site,” says Dr. Ardon.
A common ques-
tion asked by parents is
whether the risk of getting
vaccinated for COVID-19
is higher than the risk of
children getting infected
with COVID-19.
“Because the vac-
cine is extremely safe,
extremely eff ective, we
do feel that the benefi t
greatly outweighs any
potential risks of the vac-
cine, which really, there
are very minimal risks, if
any. And the ones that we
have noticed are things
that we can take care
of in the outpatient set-
ting very easily,” says Dr.
Ardon. “The risks of actu-
ally getting COVID-19
for our patients are quite
signifi cant. We see things
like infl ammation of the
heart, chronic lung prob-
lems. Patients may need to
be hospitalized, and even
can die from COVID-19
infection.”
Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times-TNS
Nicole Fahey sits with her daughter Adelina, 6, as she receives the pediatric Pfi zer-BioNTech vaccination
from nurse Shirley Alfonso at Eugene A. Obregon Park in Los Angeles.
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