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Sweetness

Sweetness for today and tomorrow

Sweetness in foods and beverages is a balancing act of taste, texture, labeling and costs. How much of this? How little of that? Naturally based or artificial? The Sweetness innovation springboard of Ingredion Idea Labs™ science-based problem solving helps you find the answers and achieve the right balance as you deliver on the trends:

  • Clean and simple, with implications for naturally based, non-GMO and organic sweeteners
  • Health and nutrition, with interest in reducing sugar
  • Distinctive sensory experiences, with the ever-present need to make foods and beverages delicious and even indulgent
  • Affordability for both you and your consumers

We start with consumer insights to help you understand the feelings and nuances behind your consumers’ sweetness preferences. New research has identified five sweetness consumer personas—from nothing-but natural “Naturelles” to the sugar-loving “Care-free” group. These substantiated personas shed light on lifestyles, attitudes and deeper concerns that shape consumers’ sweetness preferences.

Teaming up with texture

Your recipes are better when you keep texture clearly in mind as you formulate for sweetness. The two dimensions together create the memorable sensory experience of eating. To achieve synergies in this area, we moved our global sweetness research and development facility to the same location as our primary applied texture research facility at our global innovation center in Bridgewater, N.J., U.S.A.  Around the world, our sensory teams tackle sweetness and texture together in sugar reduction projects to get the combination just right.

When you work with us, you get the advantage of our sweetness technology and when combined with our texture functionality expertise, you can address multiple important product considerations holistically.

Every trend brings a new set of challenges for you to balance and overcome. Here’s how we work with you.

Clean and simple.

At Ingredion, you can stay ahead of the curve with stevia, now broadly recognized and accepted by consumers. We have grown stevia crops for many years, developed from a proprietary cultivar and protected by a strictly enforced crop-to-consumer production process. With our fully owned and integrated stevia plantation in South America, you benefit from an even higher level of consistency and quality in our ENLITEN® stevia.

Non-GMO.

With one of the broadest portfolios of non-GMO sweeteners available anywhere, you’ll find new ways to get the labels claims you seek.

Nutrition minus.

Through our Sweetness innovation springboard, we offer many ways to reduce sugar and calories, including caloric and non-caloric sweeteners, dextrose, high-intensity sweeteners, polyols and stevia-based sweeteners. Our comparative sweetener studies help us choose what is best for your reformulated product.

Sensory appeal.

Many of the best-loved consumer products are sweet—and we want yours to be among them. Our sensory panels use the SWEETABULARY® sweetness language to translate the many layers of sweetness that appeal to consumers into scientific language to guide formulation. The result? Delicious indulgences that become people’s favorites.

Affordability.

Sugar is still the standard on which the industry measures cost—and it is one of the most expensive ingredients to replace. Our sweetness scientists can help you bring the amount of sugar down to very low levels, using other ingredients to achieve the desired sweetness profile. Some of our high-intensity sweeteners are up to 600 times sweeter than sugar, allowing for extremely low cost-in-use solutions. Our polyols, for example, have only about half the calories—and all the bulk—of sugar and is highly cost effective.

Work directly with our sweetness experts at Ingredion Idea Labs™ innovation centres, where science-based problem solving and spirited collaboration speed your pathway to better solutions.

  • We can help you perfect the attributes of sweeteners, in bakery, confectionery and dairy where building back texture can be challenging.
  • Our strong formulation knowledge—supported by expert sensory panels and a wide range of texturisers—can help you solve challenges like bulking, freeze point in ice cream and textural properties in cereal bars.
  • We also work with your processes to ensure our ingredients perform the way you need them to – exploring process improvements to help you reduce your manufacturing costs.

Discover the source of innovation that’s ready to help you answer the trends in sweetness both today and tomorrow. Collaborate with us at Ingredion Idea Labs™ innovation centres.

Reduce sugar

Deliver the sweetness experience your consumers crave – with less sugar. 

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