Reducing sugar: Ajinomoto Health & Nutrition and Shiru leverage AI to develop sweet proteins

01 Aug 2024 --- Ajinomoto Health & Nutrition and AI-enabled protein discovery company Shiru are joining forces in a first-of-its-kind partnership in the global ingredients sector. They will jointly develop sweet proteins to replace the “sweetening power of sugar and other sweeteners.”

One of the crucial benefits expected of the collaboration is the commercialization of sweet proteins for use in beverages and specialty products that target health benefits for consumers. This makes them an appealing sugar replacement and could offer brands clean label on-pack sugar reduction health claims.

Sweet proteins can replace sugar and other sweeteners in F&B without spiking blood sugar levels associated with diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease.

According to Ajinomoto, low volumes of known sweet proteins derived from fruits and berries grow near the equator and show encouraging signs of being used as sugar substitutes. They also have pegged to overcome the difficulties often associated with taste and stability.

Unlocking natural sweetness
Shiru will use its AI-driven discovery platform, Flourish, to find additional natural, food-safe proteins that were not previously known to be sweet.

Sweet proteins derived from fruits and berries show encouraging signs of being used as sugar substitutes.Sweet proteins have the potential as a sustainable alternative to high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), a sweetener that manufacturers make from corn starch to be used in sodas, sweetened juice, processed desserts and other applications.

They can deliver up to 5,000 times more sweetness than sugar, offering the potential to replace 70-90% of the sweetness provided by sugar. Sweet proteins are also metabolized differently in the body, therefore not causing blood sugar levels to spike. They don’t trigger insulin release, which can help to 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,” says the company.

Moderating blood sugar levels
The financial details of the deal have not been disclosed, but both companies are keen to flag the synergies of this sweet protein partnership. 

Ajinomoto Health & Nutrition has a comprehensive portfolio of sweetener ingredients and can leverage its customer base of F&B giants. It also has 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.

What’s next in functional ingredients?
ProteinDiscovery.ai is described as the “Amazon for proteins,” a marketplace for discovering, piloting and buying molecules for food, agriculture, personal care and advanced material applications. The database has more than 33 million molecules by sequence and functional use.

The sugar substitutes can be used in beverages and specialty products that target health benefits for consumers.“Our partnership with Shiru is one of many examples of our approach to innovation,” says Ryan Smith, chief growth officer and executive VP 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.”

Shiru also has partnerships with Puratos and Griffith Foods to discover and scale sustainable food ingredients. Other ingredients include OleoPro, a high-performance, structured fat that replaces saturated animal fat and unsustainable tropical oils, including palm, coconut oil and cocoa butter in food and personal care, which just received a patent from the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Earlier this year, Jasmin Hume, CEO of Shiru, spoke to Food Ingredients First about how this new plant protein-based fat ingredient offers another option to oils commonly used in plant-based meats (coconut and palm oil).

By Gaynor Selby