The White Menace

It would be fair to say that sugar has become the dirty word of the decade, if not the current century. Everywhere we look we are surrounded by reduced sugar or sugar-free products on our supermarket aisles, magazines are constantly offering reduced-sugar diet plans and blogs are full with reams of sugar-substituted recipes. This trend follows us throughout the day, from our breakfast cereals to our desserts, not forgetting of course the snacks and drinks that we consume throughout our day. When consumers were asked what particular elements of their diets, they most wanted to cut back on, 43% answered that sugar was what they tend to avoid or limit, compared to just 40% for fat and a mere 33% for salt. But where has this new trend come from? What had led to the rise of the sugar-free industry?

The answer of course lies in a growing awareness of the damage that sugar can do to our health.  Whereas beforehand, it was only dentists who were ringing the alarm bells about the horrendous effects that sugar can have on our teeth, there is a growing awareness of the other negative long and short-term consequence of the world’s favourite sweetener.  Dr Francesco Branca, Director of the World Health Organisation’s Department of Nutrition for Health and Development stated that they “have solid evidence that keeping intake of free sugars to less than 10% of total energy intake reduces the risk of being overweight, obesity and tooth decay.”  These statements came after the WHO presented its new guidelines for sugar consumption in 2015 stating that both adults and children alike needed to keep their sugar consumption down to an absolute maximum of 10% of their daily calorie intake.  In the average adult this would work out as around 50g of sugar and their guidelines even go on to suggest that there are additional health benefits to be had to reducing sugar to a mere 5% of calorie intake – some 25 grams.

At first, this may seem like an awful lot, but 25 grams only really works out at around 6 teaspoons.  When you consider that the average 330 ml can of soft drink contains 10 teaspoons of sugar, it’s easy to see how most people are struggling to cut their sugar consumption down to fit with the WHO stipulations.  At the same time, many governments are reporting that citizens aren’t bringing their consumption levels down to within this minimum.

Given such disastrous rates, it’s little surprise that governments have also recently been making moves to curb their citizen’s consumption of the product with 25 countries introducing a “sugar tax” in the last five years, bringing us to a total of 29 countries. Following similar so-called “sin taxes”, like those on tobacco and alcohol, the intention is for people to think with their wallets and make the move to reduced-sugar or sugar-free products.  Taking into consideration that includes a huge range of countries from the US, large swathes of Western and Northern Europe, Chile, Mexico, South Africa, and many other countries, we are starting to see huge markets emerging for products that give consumers all the positives of the sweet treats they know and love without taking the subsequent blow to their health and wallet.

Out of the consumers we surveyed, three in four told us that they tend to curtail their sugar intake.  However, only one in two of them said that they were willing to let go of the benefits that sugar brings to them.

This contradiction between wanting to cut back but not wanting to miss out on all the good things that sugar offers, is where great potential lies for creating new and innovative products.

In the past 10 years, MANE has massively invested in research on sweetness modulation to respond to sugar reduction’s expectations. Our global research platform, SENSE CAPTURE MS, encompasses the work of our strategic development centers around the world on sweet perception, sweet modulation and natural aromatic ingredients enabling us to serve our customers with state of the art solutions and to fill our pipe-line with a continuous stream of flavouring innovations for the years to come.