After sugar substitutes displaced white granulated sugar in beverages, they sparked an endless, never-ceasing internal strife.

"Not sweet" is often the highest praise Chinese people give to a drink or a dessert.

Beyond taste, people's increasingly strong pursuit of health has made sugar reduction and sugar control an unavoidable topic for the food and beverage industry.

In 2018, Genki Forest swept the bottled carbonated beverage sector with erythritol, while Heytea took the lead in launching steviol glycosides on its menu, bringing sugar substitutes directly to consumers. Later, the industry's expectations for sugar substitutes rose step by step, from simply achieving zero calories, to minimizing blood sugar fluctuations as much as possible, and then to pursuing a taste close to real sugar. In 2022, Nayuki launched the concept of mogrosides, directly packaging the type of sugar substitute used as a product selling point.

Nowadays, a new dominant player has emerged in the sugar substitute industry. D-allulose, which was recently approved, has quietly appeared on the ingredient lists of new tea drink stores and new-style beverages in supermarkets.

A narrative similar to that of erythritol in the past is repeating itself, and some people call D-allulose "the strongest sugar substitute on Earth".

Sugar substitutes are the only category among all food ingredients that keep iterating and updating. After all, you will never see new versions of salt or pepper powder launched year after year. Sugar is tied to weight and health anxiety, and it also supports the upstream raw material business. Sanyuan Bio, which focuses on erythritol and D-allulose, was listed on the ChiNext in 2022, with its market value approaching 19.7 billion yuan on the first day of listing. So far, more than ten A-share listed companies have laid out sugar substitute-related businesses.

Consumers, upstream and downstream businesses are all looking for the perfect sugar substitute, hoping it can also support a perfect capital story. But the perfect sugar substitute may never exist.

A new dominant player has taken the throne

The essence of people's search for sugar substitutes is to reject added sugar. Sucrose, high-fructose corn syrup and malt syrup are all added sugars, which will be completely absorbed by the human body, rapidly raise blood sugar in a short time, and bring calories and other physical burdens.

But the process of finding the perfect sugar substitute is not easy. We first tried artificial synthesis, from which sucralose and acesulfame potassium came: they are zero-calorie and not absorbed by the human body, but have a bitter aftertaste and poor taste. Since synthesis did not work well, people tried to extract sweet substances from natural plants, leading to the emergence of steviol glycosides and mogrosides, but they still have a distinct herbal off-flavor consistent with their plant origin.

In recent years, sugar alcohols and rare sugars have begun to occupy the market, and both erythritol and D-allulose fall into this category. They are neither synthetic nor directly extracted from natural plants, but produced by fermenting corn starch. They have the same molecular skeleton as sucrose, and their taste is closer to real sugar. The human body only absorbs a small amount of them, and their metabolic pathways are special, so they can achieve low calories and low glycemic response while ensuring a good taste.

All industries involving added sugar have joined the sugar substitute revolution, either actively or passively, among which the new-style tea drink sector is a typical representative.

In 2018, Heytea took the lead in launching steviol glycosides on its in-store menu, making sugar substitute an option that consumers can actively check, and brands such as Lelecha soon followed suit. Before that, sugar reduction in milk tea only meant adjusting the sweetness level to less sugar or light sugar. From that moment on, the sweet raw material itself began to become a product selling point that brands can promote to the public.

After that, erythritol became a hit. Many people mistakenly think that it is directly extracted from plants, but industrially mass-produced erythritol is made from corn starch through microbial fermentation. With its refreshing sweet taste and stable properties, erythritol quickly gained popularity, and its cost continued to drop, becoming the most mainstream base material for zero-calorie compound sugar.

In 2022, Nayuki brought mogrosides to the forefront, which was the first large-scale marketing campaign in the industry that took a single sugar substitute raw material as an independent brand selling point.

Later, players with different ideas emerged in the track: L-arabinose. It not only brings sweetness, but also inhibits the activity of sucrase in the small intestine. When consumed together with sucrose, it can reduce the decomposition and absorption of sucrose by the human body and lower postprandial blood sugar fluctuations. Heytea also used it in its low-GI custom drink series.

Until today, D-allulose has appeared on the stage, which is called the new generation of "the strongest sugar substitute on Earth" in the industry. Among domestic new-style tea drink brands, Nayuki took the lead in applying it, using D-allulose in its "Slim Little Green Bottle" product. Shuxia also officially announced its cooperation with COFCO to apply D-allulose in its milkshake products. Even new beverages recently launched by Freshippo, such as bitter gourd lemonade, have added D-allulose.

The story of D-allulose is more convincing, because it almost makes up for all the shortcomings of previous sugar substitutes. Its sweet taste is extremely close to sucrose, with soft and pure sweetness, no icy feeling in the mouth that erythritol has, and no lingering herbal off-flavor that mogrosides have. At the same time, it has extremely low calories and minimal impact on blood sugar fluctuations.

Mr. Jin, General Manager of Zhongda Hengyuan Biotechnology, told Zhiwei that the research side has found that D-allulose can stimulate the intestine to secrete GLP-1, which is an endogenous hormone in the human body that has attracted extremely high attention in global blood sugar management for its effectiveness in improving blood sugar curves. D-allulose shares the GLP-1 mechanism with semaglutide, which is a highly discussed product in the market.

That is to say, D-allulose looks like a kind of sugar, but it does not have the aggressive nature of sucrose, and even has a mild blood sugar control effect.

More uniquely, it can also trigger the Maillard reaction, which the vast majority of sugar substitutes on the market cannot do. Luna, a person who has long followed the food industry, revealed to Zhiwei that many baking companies have indeed begun to express their recognition of D-allulose to her.

If D-allulose can dominate both the milk tea and baking industries, it is no exaggeration to say that a new dominant player has taken the throne.

The perfect sugar substitute does not exist

D-allulose is indeed excellent, but it is not invincible.

At present, on the industrial side, the core application scenarios of D-allulose are concentrated in high value-added tracks such as beverages, candies, pre-made dishes, baked goods, health products and low-GI functional foods.

Mr. Jin also told Zhiwei that thanks to its property of stimulating the human body to secrete GLP-1, one of its important future directions may be to adapt to catering scenarios. "For example, when people eat hot pot, we can promote the idea of pairing it with a drink added with D-allulose. Appropriate intake before meals helps to stabilize postprandial blood sugar fluctuations."

This is different from the public's imagination. New-style tea drinks are not the main battlefield of D-allulose. Brands only use it in a symbolic, tentative and small amount, and will not replace the original sweet system on a large scale.

The reason is very simple, its cost is relatively higher, and customers are relatively price-sensitive. At present, D-allulose is nothing more than a more attractive story.

Mr. Jin explained that the application and popularization of D-allulose in overseas markets was first rooted in functional foods in Japan, such as Rare Sweet, Danone Japan's allulose yogurt and so on. Such products focus on health-related narratives, with strong product premium capability, and consumers are willing to pay for such functional raw materials.

That is to say, D-allulose itself is a raw material that grew up in the high-end and high-margin market, and is suitable for products with inherent health stories.

In contrast, in China, consumers' awareness of sugar substitutes is built up through mass consumer goods such as new-style tea drinks and affordable bottled beverages, and people are accustomed to cost-effective sugar reduction solutions. The underlying market logic of the two does not match, which makes it difficult for D-allulose, which has inherent high-end attributes, to be widely applied in mass tea drinks at present.

In terms of cost pressure, Mr. Jin also mentioned that the production chain of D-allulose is longer than that of mature sugar substitutes such as erythritol, with complex fermentation processes, higher production cycles, energy consumption and upfront factory construction investment. The selling price in overseas markets remains at 30,000 to 40,000 yuan per ton (note: erythritol is about 10,000 yuan per ton). From the perspective of supply and demand, the current global total demand for D-allulose is only about 200,000 tons, which is a very obvious gap compared with the mature market volume of more than 2 million tons of other natural sugar substitutes. At present, the domestic D-allulose market is still in its initial stage. Brands have entered the market to try one after another, but a large-scale supply-demand relationship has not yet taken shape, so the production capacity cannot be expanded to dilute the cost.

It is worth mentioning that there are special edible restrictions in China. According to the relevant announcement of the National Health Commission, the recommended daily upper limit of D-allulose is 20 grams, while mainstream sugar substitutes such as sucralose, steviol glycosides and erythritol do not have such daily edible limits for consumers in domestic approval documents.

However, even if you consume up to the upper limit of 20 grams, the sweet taste brought by D-allulose is still relatively soft, and its sweet efficiency is not prominent. For new-style tea drinks that require rich and strong sweet taste, such characteristics are difficult to meet the formula requirements, so it naturally has no advantage in cost performance.

With multiple realistic conditions in front of them, new-style tea drink brands do not have enough motivation to replace their main sugar source with D-allulose. The current small amount of addition is more of an attempt to create selling points for new products, rather than an overall raw material replacement across the industry.

Liu Jing, a food R&D expert and popular science writer, also believes that the ultimate direction of the sugar substitute track is never to find an all-around perfect optimal solution, but to move towards more segmented adaptation. "Different food categories have completely different requirements for sugar substitutes. Baking needs raw materials that can trigger the Maillard reaction, tea drinks value a clean and pure flavor, and candies have requirements for crystallinity and taste texture."

He said that in addition, the needs of different groups of people are also differentiated. Diabetic patients, fitness enthusiasts, and ordinary consumers who want to reduce sugar intake have different demands for glycemic response, metabolic characteristics, intake dosage and even eating time. Even for the same drink, brands can launch regular versions and light versions with different sweet formulas.

The successive emergence of new sugar substitutes is essentially not to find a once-and-for-all sweet solution. We are just finding a temporary option that is more in line with consumer trends within the current constraints of technology, cost, policy and flavor. The value brought by sugar substitutes has never been to completely eliminate sucrose, but to provide sweet options that better fit the needs of different products and different groups of people.

"Give Us Back White Granulated Sugar!"?

Interestingly, recently, consumers have launched a "Give Us Back White Granulated Sugar" movement.

While netizens are boycotting added sugars such as high-fructose corn syrup that are different from white granulated sugar, they are also resisting various sugar substitutes.

More and more people realize that sucrose, as a sweet source that human beings have used for thousands of years, has a higher adaptability to people's taste. Sugar itself is not a monster. The real problem is that modern processed foods make people consume excessive sugar inadvertently. Under the premise of a normal diet without consuming a large amount of processed foods, the burden brought by sugar is not as terrible as imagined.

Netizens have begun to actively investigate the sugar usage schemes of various tea drink brands. They found that the ordering pages of many stores do not clearly mark the specific types of sweet raw materials. If there is a zero-calorie sugar option on the menu, only a few brands will mark the corresponding name of the sugar.

Liu Jing reminds consumers to pay attention to the ingredient list, see which sugar substitute the sweetness comes from, and check whether there are hidden sugars such as high-fructose corn syrup and concentrated fruit juice.

However, compared with packaged beverages where the ingredient list is mandatory to be marked, the sweet raw materials of offline tea drinks have long been a blind area of opaque information. In fact, the vast majority of brands only distinguish between 30%, 50%, 70% sugar, or no additional sugar. No additional sugar does not mean sugar-free. If the base of the drink uses concentrated fruit juice or fruit pulp, the raw materials will naturally contain added sugar or fructose from fruits. Even if no extra sugar is added, the whole cup of drink still contains sugar.

Even, when many people choose 30% sugar to reduce sugar intake, they have no idea that the "30%, 50%, 70%" sugar levels in the milk tea system do not decay linearly in proportion, and the sugar they consume is more than they think. Because the human tongue's perception of sweetness is non-linear. The "30%, 50%, 70%" here refers to the perceived sweetness, not the amount of added sugar.

There is another easily overlooked misconception, which is compound syrup. Mr. Jin mentioned that most sweet raw material manufacturers now do not sell a single sweet monomer alone, but provide a complete set of compound schemes. "Flavor sensory research shows that sweetness has sequential differences in front sweetness, after sweetness and lingering sweetness. Any single sweet monomer can only restore part of the sensory characteristics of sucrose's sweet taste, and it is difficult to reproduce the complete sensory curve of sucrose from the onset of sweetness to the aftertaste. Therefore, it is necessary to compound multiple sweeteners, and use the complementary effect of the sweet taste sequence of different monomers to learn from each other's strengths and weaknesses, so as to simulate the natural sweet taste close to sucrose. A large number of new-style tea drinks and packaged beverages use such compound schemes."

That is to say, the sweetness we finally taste is never brought by a single popular raw material alone, but a comprehensive sweet scheme formed by mixing multiple raw materials while taking into account flavor and cost.

"Sugar is one of the few ingredients that can directly stimulate dopamine in the human body and bring physical pleasure." Mr. Jin said. Looking for better sugar is more like an instinct.

Therefore, this round of "Give Us Back White Granulated Sugar" movement is essentially rooted in consumers' pursuit of better taste. They do not want to be fooled by other low-cost added sugars, nor do they want to be kidnapped by the health concept of sugar substitutes and give up good taste.

We will not see the industry continuously iterate to find healthier and better-tasting salt, pepper or monosodium glutamate, but we are constantly developing new sugars and sugar substitutes. Essentially, what we have been looking for is a kind of sweetness that meets both the standards of pleasure and health.

But there is no perfect answer to this question, and people's pursuit of taste and health is endless.

This also means that sugar substitutes, which have replaced white granulated sugar in some fields, have started an endless civil war with no end in sight.

This article is from WeChat Official Account "Zhiwei", author: Zhou Zhou, editor: Dabing, authorized for release by 36Kr.