27 Jan “Rare sugar” commercialisation making waves in Japan
Kagawa University, Japan, researchers have developed a way to mass-produce a “rare sugar” that has 70 percent the sweetness of regular sugar but also prevents blood sugar and fat buildup. [Click pic to enlarge]
Rare sugar, of which there are 50 or so varieties, is not readily found in the wild, hence its name. Rare sugars have various functions and great potential for use in the food industry, pharmaceuticals and other applications.
Its popularity as a healthy substitute for real sugar appears to be on the threshold of exploding nationally and possibly globally.
A 500-gram bottle of household syrup Rare Sugar Sweet, one of the names it’s being marketed under, sold for 1,260 yen ($12) when it was released across Japan in August last year.
But in October, after it was introduced to a television audience as “a non-fattening sweetener,” Takamatsu-based RareSweet, the seller of the product, was bombarded with nearly 60,000 orders in a single week. Production could not meet demand. Since then, the company has finally caught up, and mail order sales of Rare Sugar Sweet resumed on Jan. 20.
“People were amazed at this extraordinary sweetener,” said Koji Kondo, the 73-year-old president of RareSweet and former president of Kagawa University. “We’ve even talked with major beverage makers about developing new products.”
The relationship between rare sugar and Kagawa University goes back to 1991. At that time, Ken Izumori, now 70, was researching naturally occurring rare sugars as a specially appointed professor in the university’s Faculty of Agriculture.
While carrying out his research, Izumori isolated an enzyme he discovered in soil behind the university’s cafeteria that converted fructose, a sugar found naturally in many plants and fruits, into the rare sugar D-Psicose.
But the potential uses for the rare sugar at the time were little understood and so Izumori’s research was much criticized. He was often asked, “What good is there in making that type of sugar?”
Consequently, research on its potential uses did not readily start until the late 1990s.
Izumori created the name “rare sugar,” among which Xylitol, used in chewing gum and other products, is probably the most widely known.
For its part, Kagawa University eventually established the Rare Sugar Research Center and the International Society of Rare Sugars in 2001.
In 2007, it was discovered that the sugar helps suppress the buildup of blood sugar and fat. The university eventually developed a pure 100-percent D-Psicose sweetener, and in 2010 applied to the Food for Specified Health Use for certification to sell the new product as a table sugar that prevents increased blood sugar.
Kagawa Prefecture, which has subsidized the university’s research since 1998, is promoting local production of rare sugars to help boost the economy.
While it was possible to use the enzyme discovered by Izumori to transform fructose into pure rare sugar, the process was costly. Kagawa University researchers, in conjunction with private-sector researchers, eventually found a solution to make cost-effective products…..