Japanese food company Ajinomoto, through its US subsidiary Ajinomoto Health & Nutrition North America (AHN), has partnered with protein discovery company Shiru to develop sweet proteins for use in beverages and speciality products.
Under the collaboration, Shiru will leverage AI-powered protein discovery and AHN its expertise in fermentation.
Sweet proteins are a class of proteins that deliver a sugar-like sweetness, and a few known sweet proteins are derived from fruits and berries that grow near the equator.
They can replace sugar and other sweeteners in food and beverages, without spiking blood sugar levels which is linked to diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular diseases.
The known sweet proteins show early promise, but face challenges related to taste and stability.
Shiru will use Flourish, its AI-driven discovery platform, to discover additional natural, food-safe proteins that are not previously known to be sweet.
Shiru founder and CEO Jasmin Hume said: “Ajinomoto Health & Nutrition conducted a tremendous amount of due diligence and determined that partnering with Shiru provides them access to a landscape of protein solutions that is truly differentiated and represents the fastest way to discover and develop commercially valuable sweet proteins across their product lines.
“At Shiru we share Ajinomoto Health & Nutrition’s vision of eating well and living well. Together our companies are now using artificial intelligence to supercharge this mission, which we are very excited for.
“We are already identifying high-value, natural, scalable proteins for Ajinomoto Health & Nutrition’s brands which we know will positively impact human and planetary health alike.”
According to the companies, sweet proteins are a more sustainable alternative to HFCS and sugar production and replace sugar in food and beverage product development.
Also, sweet proteins can deliver up to 5,000 times more sweetness than sugar, offering the potential to replace 70-90% of sweetness provided by sugar in food and beverage products.
Unlike sugar, sweet proteins do not spike blood sugar levels but help manage blood sugar and diabetes, as the body metabolises them differently, and are not harmful to the gut microbes.
AHN said that its existing portfolio of sweetener ingredients has a strong market position, with a customer base comprising the world’s biggest food and beverage companies.
In addition, Ajinomoto also has fermentation-produced products across other applications, including biopharmaceutical, sports and wellness nutrition, and nutraceutical, among others.
Ajinomoto Health and Nutrition chief growth officer and executive vice president Ryan Smith said: “Our partnership with Shiru is one of many examples of our approach to innovation.
“We believe in working with partners and solutions that uniquely complement our century-plus of expertise in the ingredient space, our expansive portfolio of products for improving nutrition, and our dedicated and talented team around the globe.
“As collective industry leaders, we believe this partnership will position both of us to be on the cutting edge of what’s next in functional ingredients, specifically in protein, an increasing category of interest for consumers.
“This partnership, and our balanced strengths, will allow us to identify natural proteins for use as sweeteners across numerous applications to meet the changing demands of the food industry and what consumers expect.”
