Opportunities for Innovation
The Sugar Challenge
Health Impact
Poor diet is a major risk factor for deadly diseases across the globe:
- ■ 1 in 5 deaths linked to unhealthy diet and high sugar is hallmark of unhealthy diet.
- ■ The average American eats 152 Lbs of sugar per year.
Diabetes
- ■ Diabetes: nearly 500 million diabetic global citizens.
- ■ 37.3 million US citizens are diabetic; 97 million US adults are pre-diabetic.
- ■ Diabetes costs the US $327 billion annually.
Obesity
- ■ 2 billion people across the globe overweight or obese.
- ■ 42% of US adults struggle with Obesity.
- ■ Annual medical costs of obesity total $147-$210 billion in the US.
Heart Disease
- ■ Leading cause of deaths in the US-1 in 4;1 person every 36 seconds.
- ■ 18 million US adults suffer from Coronary Artery Disease.
- ■ Heart disease costs US $360 billion annually.
Environmental Toll
Sugarcane and sugar beet production can deplete soil health
- ■ Sugar cane production takes up 60 million acres worldwide; 903,400 acres in the US.
Sugar crops require a lot of land for the amount of sweetness produced:
- ■ Increased carbon emissions.
- ■ Higher chemical use.
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Stevia
The Solution
Early efforts to create a stevia sugar substitute didn’t pass the palate test with consumers, and they continue their conflict between what tastes good and what’s good for them.
That is all about to change
Our scientists at The Plant Pathways Company have sequenced, assembled and annotated the entire DNA sequence of stevia. As a result, we are creating a paradigm shift in sugar replacement with natural, customized stevia varieties developed with cutting-edge breeding-by-design technologies.
Revolutionizing Flavor & Formulation
Through our industry-transforming technologies, we can work with customers to create flavor, potency and formulation profiles within the plant to accommodate a variety of end-use applications. This reduces the added costs of blending, fermentation and bioconversion.
Reducing Environmental Impact
Our approach to stevia also creates a new playing field for environmental health. The steviol glycosides in stevia are 200-350X sweeter than sugar, which means less is more. More sweetness per acre from this polyannual crop equates to less land needed to grow stevia. Fewer crop acres means fewer chemical and nutrient inputs, less water use, fewer equipment hours and less fuel use, and improved soil health.
Redefining Health Benefits
The properties within stevia make it the ideal solution in the fight against obesity, diabetes and heart disease. Steviol glycosides are non- caloric Unlike sugar, stevia does not raise blood glucose levels. Plus, this customized natural sweetener can be extracted from the plant and incorporated into products without the need for additives, which also means fewer ingredients on product labels.
Stevia
The Future
Our stevia library boasts thousands of proprietary lineages. We are eager to meet with new customers to learn about their specific needs. By evaluating our library and using our Breeding by Design capabilities, we can create a custom “plant recipe” that accounts for the product requirements in the breeding phase rather than adding time, complexity and costs in the processing phase. We are also collaborating with grower and supply chain partners in the U.S., Uruguay and other countries to create production options outside the traditional stevia-production areas in China.