KraftHeinz might be greatest recognized for its namesake manufacturers of Kraft mac & cheese and Heinz tomato ketchup. The corporate owns almost 200 world manufacturers throughout classes together with condiments and sauces, cheese and dairy, meals, meats, refreshment drinks, espresso and different grocery merchandise. As a part of its ESG agenda, the group has dedicated to rising the supply of wholesome meals and to pursuing dietary goals establishing higher limits on energy, sodium, sugar and saturated fats.
“We’re keen about feeding the world, and we take that accountability critically. We wish customers to have the ability to put one thing on their plate that they be ok with, and that’s tasty and nutritious for his or her household to eat,” stated John Topinka, Analysis Technique Lead at Kraft Heinz. “To that finish, we now have set our personal Environmental, Social and Governance objectives to do the best factor for customers and for the surroundings. A kind of objectives is to cut back the whole sugar in our merchandise by greater than 60 million kilos by 2025.”
Innovation is a important lever in KraftHeinz’s reformulation technique as the corporate works to cut back the sugar content material in its portfolio with out compromising on style. In a bid to uncover contemporary sugar discount techniques and applied sciences, the US-based meals large launched a partnership with Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Impressed Engineering, which makes use of organic design rules to develop new engineering innovation. “Along with Wyss Institute, we’re creating new approaches to assist us meet this objective,” Topinka defined.
The issue: ‘Make sugar more healthy’
Lowering sugar isn’t so simple as swapping sucrose for an alternate sweetener. Past offering sweetness, sugar performs a number of different capabilities throughout the meals matrix: it caramelizes to provide the browning on baked items; it helps thicken spreads like jam and preserves; it creates an acidic surroundings to cut back meals spoilage; and it produces a satisfying mouthfeel. In accordance with KraftHeinz, this creates a catch-22. Whereas decreasing the sugar content material in meals could make them more healthy it additionally creates the problem of looking for alternate methods to copy all the opposite qualities sugar delivers.
Topinka and his workforce introduced this conundrum to the Wyss Institute at Harvard College throughout a gathering in 2018. Might they create one thing that allowed the corporate to cut back the quantity of sugar (particularly fructose) used of their meals with out sacrificing sugar’s different helpful properties?
Wyss Founding Director Dr Don Ingber responded to that query with one other query… Was creating an alternative to sugar actually the perfect method? What if the corporate might proceed to make use of sugar however someway mitigate its destructive results on well being?
A two-year ‘whirlwind’ of analysis exercise adopted on the Wyss Institute, funded by a sponsored analysis settlement with Kraft Heinz. The intention: to make sugar more healthy.
“We thought we’d come to the Wyss with an not possible downside, and so they turned it on its head to current an excellent crazier concept to resolve it. We assembled a various workforce of among the smartest individuals I’ve ever met to see if they might do it,” mirrored Judith Moca, Head of Expertise Discovery and Growth at Kraft Heinz.
Microencapsulating enzymes to show sugar into fibre within the intestine
To deal with this problem, the Wyss workforce marshalled researchers from throughout the labs of Core College members Ingber, Jim Collins, David Walt, and Dave Weitz. After evaluating completely different potential avenues of analysis, the workforce settled on an method primarily based on naturally occurring enzymes that crops use to transform sugar into fibre. These enzymes might theoretically be added to meals with out modifying their sugar content material, with the target of changing sugar into fibre as soon as it reached the human intestine.
Not solely would this method scale back the quantity of sugar absorbed into the bloodstream, it could additionally produce gut-healthy prebiotic fibre.
However whereas the idea is perhaps sound, the problem was the best way to translate the idea right into a workable resolution that’s applicable for meals manufacturing settings.
“Past simply discovering an answer that was technically sound, it was equally vital to us that our resolution would truly work in the actual world of meals manufacturing, as a result of one thing that solely works in lab situations isn’t very helpful,” stated Dr Adama Sesay, a Senior Engineer on the Wyss Institute and a member of the workforce assembled to work on the venture.
The Wyss workforce labored carefully alongside KraftHeinz, with common calls to debate progress and challenges and set up priorities and subsequent steps. A important requirement for KraftHeinz was that the enzymes may very well be added to current meals merchandise with out the necessity to alter current recipes.
An vital unlock was the usage of encapsulation strategies that may make sure the enzymes would stay intact below meals processing situations, together with elevated temperatures. The workforce consulted with a gastroenterologist to find out how the enzyme would have an effect on the human digestive system. After ‘months of experimentation’, they have been in a position to engineer an enzyme product that may stay encapsulated till uncovered to a rise in pH, corresponding to that which happens within the transition from the human abdomen to the gut, the place it could activate and begin changing sugar to fibre,
Members of Ingber’s lab are actually working to check the enzyme product in mice to allow them to observe its results on dietary sugar in a dwelling organism, with hopes to launch a start-up to supply the product on the market to meals corporations.
“We went into this venture with a completely clean slate to see what was potential. Working with the Wyss Institute was an ideal expertise, and we might love to seek out extra alternatives for collaboration with modern teams which have equally nice concepts about the best way to make meals – and the world – more healthy,” stated Topinka.
“Initiatives like this are a big cause why the Wyss Institute was created: to tackle real-world issues which are too thorny for corporations to resolve on their very own, and create novel options that may have speedy, constructive impression. Kraft Heinz has been a unbelievable accomplice, and we’re all the time open to speaking with different corporations about how we are able to mix our strengths to make a distinction on this planet,” Ingber added.
