Daesang advances sugar-reduction with Sweevero Allulose

05 Sep 2024 --- South Korea-based food and ingredients producer Daesang touts the health benefits, sweetness and its company’s production capacity for its Sweevero Allulose sugar reduction solution. Daesang reveals that the ingredient is suitable for a wide range of food and beverage (F&B) applications and can aid in reducing the risk of non-communicable diseases, such as type 2 diabetes.

At the company’s headquarters in Seoul, Food Ingredients First sits down with Hanjoong Ryu, allulose squad project team at Daesang’s starch and sweetener specialty department, to discuss the company’s alternative sweetener allulose offering and its plans for market expansion.

“Currently, we are focusing on the US and Korean markets,” Ryu explains. “In addition, we are preparing to create a market in Southeast Asia and in the European markets to register our allulose as a novel food.”

“Daesang has branches in each global region, so we don’t have any global partners right now, but I think we need reasonable partnerships to expand the global market in the future.”

Sweet sugar-reduction

According to Ryu, a key aspect of Sweevero Allulose is that its sweetness is “quite similar” to that of fructose and it offers a better taste profile compared to other alternatives. 

“It has a more refreshing sweetness than sugar, which is very important,” he underscores. “Allulose has a synergistic effect with high-intensity sweeteners.”

“It can mask the bitter aftertaste of high sweeteners and infer the texture of applied foods and provide tastes that high sweeteners don’t have.”

Harnessing health benefits

At the same time, recent research highlights the potential of allulose to help improve postprandial blood glucose (PPG) levels in patients with type 2 diabetes.

Published in the journal Nutrients, a recent study utilized a intermittently scanned continuous glucose monitoring system to evaluate PPG and found notable improvements.

“Studies have shown that allulose can benefit people with type 2 diabetes,” Ryu emphasizes. “In fact, allulose has the effect of reducing blood sugar when consumed with glucose or fructose.”

“This is because allulose interferes with glucose and fructose transporters in the small intestines and prevents absorption in the blood.”

Manufacturing milestone

Ryu spotlights that, because of the increasing global demand for alternative sweeteners in general, and allulose in particular, the company recently opened the largest allulose production plant in South Korea.

The biofermentation player states that, before achieving this “milestone,” the company took time to calculate the value of constructing such a facility.

“There was a risk of having to invest a lot of money to build a new factory,” he says. “However, after considering the growth potential of this market, we saw that there were no problems.” 

“Additionally, though there may be problems when applying a new process to the field, these challenges were solved with Daesang’s technical know-how.”

By William Bradford Nichols