Franklin, Andrews, Kramer & Edelstein

[scion]

The Hunt for the Perfect Sugar

Beth Kowitt 6:30 AM Eastern
http://fortune.com/2017/02/22/sugar-stevia-low-calorie-sweetener/?utm_source=digg&utm_medium=email

When the history of sugar is written, 2016 may go down as the year its image turned. Sure, we always knew those sweet white crystals could rot teeth and cause people to pack on the pounds. Obesity and diabetes were already national emergencies, with the latter representing 10% of U.S. health care costs in recent years.

But now an increasing number of researchers and a buzzy book, The Case Against Sugar, have also begun linking our favorite natural sweetener to such dreaded conditions as heart disease, Alzheimer’s, and cancer. (Those conclusions are far from universally accepted to this point.) Adding a dark undercurrent, revelations in the fall suggested that the sugar industry paid Harvard scientists in the 1960s to trivialize its role in coronary problems and instead play up saturated fat as the culprit—which helped shape the direction of nutrition research to this day.

“Sugar is the new tobacco” in the minds of the public, says David Turner, a global food and drink analyst at market research firm Mintel.
And a public health war has followed. A handful of cities have responded with taxes on sugary drinks, and next year the Food and Drug Administration will start requiring companies to reveal the amount of added sugars on product packaging.

Consumers seem to be hearing the message. Research firm NPD Group has found that sugar is now the No. 1 substance they are trying to cut or eliminate from their diets. Of course, “try” is the operative word here. Whatever their aspirations, people keep right on gorging. Americans now eat a total of 76 pounds in various sugars every year, up 8% from 1970.

That’s the problem for Big Food: It’s built on the stuff. Some 74% of packaged foods and beverages in the U.S. contain some form of sweetener, according to a recent study in The Lancet, making it a more than $100 billion market. Companies “use hedonic substances, and sugar is the most ubiquitous hedonic substance,” says Robert Lustig, a professor at the University of California at San Francisco’s School of Medicine and a leading critical voice on the topic. That’s an academic way of saying that food companies know customers crave a sugar rush.

All of this has infused new urgency in the multi-decade quest to find low-calorie sweeteners. And it’s occurring just as the incumbent alternatives face ever more skepticism. According to Mintel, 39% of consumers think it’s best to avoid products containing artificial ingredients like aspartame and saccharin because of perceptions of health risks. Sales of such substitutes fell 13% between 2011 and 2016.

“I can’t drink this,” says a Tate & Lyle executive of a stevia drink prepared by his own company. “It makes me go bleh.”

That brings us to the final factor that is pressing heavily on packaged food companies: the ever-more-ravenous appetite for “natural,” unprocessed products. “Health and wellness used to be synonymous with reduced caloric intake,” says Bernstein analyst Ali Dibadj. By that standard, as he puts it, referring to the iconic early diet cola, “Tab used to be damn healthy.” No longer.

Think of food companies’ plight this way: The finest scientists in industry have spent decades trying to find or invent a no-calorie sweetener that tastes and feels as good as the stuff extracted from pure cane. And now, after they largely failed to master that complex, arduous task, the level of difficulty is being raised even higher: This improbable concoction cannot appear to have been engineered by scientists.

Let us pause here to acknowledge the sugar-frosted codependent embrace of Big Food and the American consumer. You could rightly fault consumers for their insistence on an oxymoronic product. But who has been indulging their fantasies for decades now, promising sweet, satisfying taste and no calories? Big Food, of course. Now customers are upping the stakes—and it’s not at all clear that companies can pass the test.
...
more
...

Several of the big food and beverage manufacturers have pursued this path, vowing to cut sugar in their products. Coca-Cola says it has already reduced it in more than 200 of its sodas. For its part, PepsiCo has committed that by 2025, at least two-thirds of its volume will have 100 calories or fewer per 12 ounces. (A can of Pepsi has 150 calories, for example.) General Mills has begun slashing sugar in its cereals and yogurt. Nestlé and Dr Pepper Snapple have made pledges of their own.
The challenge stems in large part from what the rest of the market is doing. “They’re afraid that consumers will taste 20% lower sweetness and go to a competitor,” says DuBois. Paul Bakus, Nestlé’s president of corporate affairs, told me that the company has to walk a narrow line between being nutritionally superior to the rest of the market and not sacrificing taste. “We want to reduce sugar where possible as long as we don’t put ourselves at a competitive disadvantage,” he says. “How do you compete if your competitors aren’t following the process or rules or guidelines?”

Some experts believe the industry should follow the template of the U.K.’s sodium reduction program. In 2005 the country’s food industry pledged to reduce sodium in key categories by as much as 50% over eight years. By 2011, national sodium consumption had dropped 15%, and deaths from stroke and heart disease fell about 40%. The U.K. is now considering a similar coordinated attack on sugar.

It’s hard to imagine the U.S. government attempting such an initiative. More likely, American regulators will leave consumers and food companies locked in their long-lasting sugary embrace. The former will keep demanding, and the latter keep promising, the perfect sweet solution—and the next miracle will always be just over the horizon.

A version of this article appears in the March 1, 2017 issue of Fortune with the headline "Sugar Rush."

http://fortune.com/2017/02/22/sugar-stevia-low-calorie-sweetener/?utm_source=digg&utm_medium=email