{"id":63032,"date":"2018-08-19T17:05:11","date_gmt":"2018-08-19T15:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=63032"},"modified":"2018-08-11T08:30:15","modified_gmt":"2018-08-11T06:30:15","slug":"06-05-29","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=63032","title":{"rendered":"New sweet protein holds out hope for diabetics"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Israel21c\"<\/a>New sweet protein holds out hope for diabetics<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

Brian Blum<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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An Israeli company has developed a sweet protein that can replace sugar in food and won\u2019t raise your blood sugar or insulin levels.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Thaumatin, found in the katemfe plant, is a sweet protein that can be used to replace sugar. Photo courtesy Amai Proteins<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Ninety-nine percent of all fruits in the world derive their sweetness from sugar. But there are a dozen or so fruits that grow along the equatorial belt that contain a sweet protein, rather than a sugar.<\/span><\/p>\n

What if that protein could be turned into a commercial product? Proteins used as a sweetener would have significant advantage over added sugar: they\u2019re digested by the body just like any other protein in the GI tract, they don\u2019t raise your blood sugar or insulin levels, they steer clear of your liver, don\u2019t burden your kidneys, nor do they affect the microbiome in the same way as sugar.<\/span><\/p>\n

That means a protein-sweetened candy bar would not contribute to diabetes or obesity as would its sugary cousin.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s what Ilan Samish was thinking when he first learned about thaumatin, the sweet protein in katemfe, a plant which grows primarily in Nigeria.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe world is spending huge amounts of money to cure disease,\u201d he tells ISRAEL21c, pointing to how obesity has been classified by the World Health Organization as a global epidemic. \u201cBut we\u2019re not focusing on curing the food that\u2019s causing the disease. We need to cure the food rather than cure the disease.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Telling people to cut down on their sweets doesn\u2019t work, Samish says. \u201cSweetness makes people happy. So we need to find a way to allow people to enjoy themselves, but in a healthy way. Now we have a way to do just that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Samish wasn\u2019t the first entrepreneur to think about harvesting sweet protein-containing fruits, but other companies have run into obstacles: the costs of picking and shipping the fruits to a lab (from Africa to somewhere in the west, as is usually the case) and then extracting and processing the protein into a powder can be prohibitive.<\/span><\/p>\n

The team at Amai Proteins. Photo courtesy Amai Proteins<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Enter computational protein design (or CPD). Samish is a CPD expert. He studied with William DeGrado, considered the \u201cfather\u201d of CPD, at the University of Pennsylvania. Samish even published\u00a0a book<\/strong><\/span><\/a> on the subject.<\/span><\/p>\n

CPD utilizes massive computer processing to map and model the structure and energetics of proteins. \u201cProteins are like a necklace of beads,\u201d Samish explains. \u201cThe beads are the amino acids that make up a protein.\u201d Samish uses CPD to mix and match beads on the necklace until the resulting protein has just the right composition to successfully work as a sweet protein fit for the mass food market.<\/span><\/p>\n

Samish\u2019s company, Amai Proteins<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, bases its design on several sweet proteins including the thaumatin found in the katemfe plant, but doesn\u2019t actually use any of the plant itself. \u201cI\u2019ve never even seen the katemfe fruit,\u201d Samish admits. \u201cI\u2019ve never been to Nigeria.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As a result, his laboratory-produced sugar substitute is \u201ca 100 percent designer protein\u201d that\u2019s even better than the original. \u201cIt\u2019s more soluble and binds less to the tongue,\u201d Samish says. That gives it an advantage over Stevia, another sugar-alternative (derived from the leaves of the Stevia plant). Stevia adheres to the tongue and causes a long-lasting and unpleasant aftertaste.<\/span><\/p>\n

CPD is resource intensive. Samish says he is grateful to Amazon and Google, which together donated $120,000 worth of cloud computing time on their systems to power Amai\u2019s protein designs.<\/span><\/p>\n

The next step in the process for Amai is to actually generate the designer protein at scale. For this, Samish turned to a less technological solution than Amazon for inspiration.<\/span><\/p>\n

Brewing beer?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWe take the DNA we\u2019ve designed and put it in yeast where it grows,\u201d Samish explains. \u201cIt\u2019s like brewing beer, but instead of making alcohol, our yeast makes a sweet protein.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The resulting powder is a pure protein. That means Amai\u2019s sweet proteins are not genetically-modified organisms, which some consumers shy away from consuming. For a food to be considered a GMO, you\u2019d have to be eating a modified version of the plant or the yeast itself. \u201cOur final product contains no remnants of the host organism\u2019s DNA,\u201d Samish says. \u201cIt\u2019s protein powder only, brewed at the fermentation facilities located at our labs in the Weizmann Science Park in Rehovot.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Sweet protein powder is several thousand times sweeter than sugar, Samish adds. \u201cSo instead of adding, say, 4 grams of sugar into a product, we need less than 2 milligrams of protein sweetener.\u201d That will help keep the costs down, but winds up creating a different challenge.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf we replace the sugar in chocolate with our protein sweetener, the chocolate will weigh only half as much,\u201d he says. \u201cSo the chocolate maker will need to add nutritional fibers.\u201d That may, in turn, change the cost as well as the taste and experience of eating the chocolate.<\/span><\/p>\n

So far, this is all theoretical: no actual Amai protein-sweetened products are on the market yet. But Samish and his team have been doing extensive tests. At the recent FoodTechIL\u00a0exposition<\/strong><\/span><\/a> in Tel Aviv, Amai gave samples of a protein-sweetened lemon soda to some 1,000 attendees. \u201cThe feedback was excellent,\u201d Samish says.<\/span><\/p>\n

For its current tests, a 50\/50 mix of protein sweetener and another sweetener (sugar or Stevia) was used. The aim, however, is to get to 100 percent sugar reduction. Amai also demonstrated some other products at FoodTech, including a strawberry-flavored drink, a whipped cream concoction and a yogurt.<\/span><\/p>\n

Amai has received NIS 3 million ($825,000) in investment to date from the Israeli-run Strauss food conglomerate. The investment was made through Strauss\u2019s Tel Aviv-based food incubator, The Kitchen Hub<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, where Amai is a portfolio company.<\/span><\/p>\n

Amai Proteins is one of a growing number of Israeli startups addressing the world\u2019s sugar addiction. The sugar substitute market is huge \u2013 worth around $9 billion a year, Samish says. By comparison, that\u2019s only a tenth of the market for sugar itself. Samish believes companies like Amai can change that. \u201cCurrent substitutes are not as tasty as sugar and are either unhealthy or perceived as such,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n

Among the other Israeli companies to keep an eye on, there\u2019s\u00a0 (\u201cmatok\u201d is Hebrew for \u201csweet\u201d) which adds an \u201cinert\u201d mineral carrier to sugar so that a food or beverage can contain less sweetener while delivering the same sensation. (It works because it\u2019s just the surface of the sugar that the body \u201cenjoys,\u201d so why not substitute sugar with something less harmful.)\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>DouxMatok<\/strong><\/span><\/a> has raised $8 million.<\/span><\/p>\n

Unavoo\u2019s Heylo product<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0takes a similar additive approach as DouxMatok, but for Stevia not sugar. Heylo adds a dietary fiber so you get less Stevia (and less aftertaste) while experiencing the same sweetness.<\/span><\/p>\n

A1C<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0uses regular sugar in its chocolates and ice creams but adds a special formulation that the company says lowers the glycemic index of its products. The company was founded by Ran Hirsch, whose daughter was diagnosed with diabetes, in collaboration with Mariela Glandt, the endocrinologist who treated her.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then there are companies like\u00a0Spirugar<\/a> <\/strong>that swap out the sugars and carbohydrates typical in cakes and cookies with flours made of nuts, almonds and seeds plus fruit and vegetable-based sweeteners (all 100 percent vegan).<\/span><\/p>\n

Amai is already working on two other sweet proteins. Ultimately, the company aims to expand into other areas where CPD can be beneficial in food design. That includes so-called \u201cfunctional foods\u201d (cereal or breads that are fortified with vitamins, herbs and nutraceuticals, for example) and \u201cmedical foods\u201d (foods that are formulated for management of disease that cannot be met by normal diet alone).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve already received requests and we definitely plan to do it,\u201d Samish says. After all, he adds, \u201cwe are a platform company for food applications.\u201d For now, though, the company\u2019s sweet spot is thaumatin and other lab-grown proteins.<\/span><\/p>\n

If he plays his fruit right, perhaps Samish will even get to see a katemfe plant in person someday.<\/span><\/p>\n

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New sweet protein holds out hope for diabetics Brian Blum An Israeli company has developed a sweet protein that can replace sugar in food and won\u2019t raise your blood sugar or insulin levels. Thaumatin, found in the katemfe plant, is a sweet protein that can be used to replace sugar. Photo courtesy Amai Proteins Ninety-nine […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63032"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63032"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63046,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63032\/revisions\/63046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}