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"Forget Cutting Sugar—New Tech Makes It Healthier Instead" - Wall Street Journal Feature

"Chicago-based Blommer Chocolate recently launched a line of reduced-sugar chocolate and confectionery products made with Incredo, a sugar that has been physically altered to taste sweeter using a mineral carrier that dissolves faster in saliva and targets the sweet-taste receptors on the tongue."

A guilt-free chocolate bar, full of sugar, could someday land at a supermarket near you.

The chocolate would look and taste normal, and contain the same amount of sugar. But an enzyme, encased in an edible substance and added to the bar, would reduce how much sugar is absorbed into the bloodstream, and even turn it into a fiber that is good for your gut.

The product is the brainchild of scientists at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. In 2018, Kraft Heinz tapped the scientists to help develop a sugar substitute that would enable the food giant to cut the sweetener from its food without losing its benefits. The scientists had a different idea—save the sugar but devise a way to make it healthier. 

“The problem is not the sugar itself,” says Sam Inverso, director of business development partnerships at the Wyss Institute. “The problem is that we eat too much sugar.”

The sugar-to-fiber enzyme is among the latest technologies dreamed up to deal with America’s sugar habit without ditching sugar itself. Another fix involves a drink mix containing microscopic sponges that soak up sugar in the stomach at mealtime. Even researchers still working to reduce sugar are peddling new technologies, like individual sugar crystals modified to dissolve more quickly in the mouth, making food taste sweeter.

Some sugar occurs naturally in our foods, like fruit and dairy products. But much of it is added by manufacturers to processed food and drinks, such as cereal and soda. U.S. regulators in recent years have begun cracking down on added sugar, in 2016 requiring food and beverage makers to disclose on nutrition labels how much sugar has been added to products. Regulators this year put limits on added sugar in school meals and are weighing a requirement that food high in substances like sugar must say so on the front of their packaging.

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