Listen: Sweet Proteins and the Future of Sweetness

Listen: Sweet Proteins and the Future of Sweetness

Do you have a sweet tooth? If so, you're not alone.

 

Turns out, we're wired to crave sweetness. But we were never meant to deal with the over abundance of sugar in our modern diet.

 

Our over reliance on processed food — often loaded with refined sugar — has led to a meteoric rise in diabetes and obesity. Nearly 1 in 3 adults are overweight, and 42% of adults are obese. And believe it or not, the average American consumes more than 100 pounds (yes, pounds!) of sugar each year.

 

Listen to this episode of Radio Health Journal featuring Oobli CTO & Co-founder Jason Ryder to learn more about sweet proteins and the future of healthy sweetness.

A Problem of Abundance

"Today we live in a world where sugar is recklessly abundant in our food system," says Oobli's own CTO and Co-founder Jason Ryder in the latest podcast episode of Radio Health Journal. "While we believe a little sugar is normal and natural, we were never meant to deal with the massive amount of sugar in modern diets."

 

Our bodies are smart. To counter small amounts of sugar, our hormonal system produces insulin to regulate the amount of sugar in our bloodstream. This works perfectly with small amounts of sugar, but this system starts to break down with continuous consumption of large amounts of sugar.

 

"When [our taste receptors] are bombarded, we make too much insulin and eventually our body can't make insulin anymore (a condition called "insulin resistance"). That's where we get type-2 diabetes. We were not designed for this much sugar, and we can see the effects of it plainly in the data on our health."

 

An image showing sugar consumption in the US

Image source: Face the Facts USA

A False Sense of Security

Low- and zero-calorie sweeteners like aspartame and stevia, and sugar alcohols like erythritol, were supposed to be a panacea for healthy sweetness. Designed to keep blood sugar and insulin rises at bay, we're now learning more about the downsides of these small-molecule sweeteners

 

"There was a recent article about erythritol contributing to prevalence of heart attack and stroke," says Jason. "We're just learning about the impacts of alternative sweetener replacements."

 

Sweet Proteins and the Future of Healthy Sweetness 

At Oobli, we strongly believe the answer to our natural sweet tooth is found in protein.

 

Jason confirms this. "Proteins are relatively large bio-molecules made up of amino acids, often called the building blocks of life...all of the fundamentals of life." So it's no surprise that a sweet solution might come from protein. "That's why we're so excited about sweet proteins."

 

Up to 10,000 times sweeter than sugar, sweet proteins don't affect the gut microbiome or trigger unhealthy rises in blood sugar and insulin. 

 

So why are we just learning about sweet proteins now? Listen to Jason Ryder on this episode of Radio Health Journal to find out. 

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