TOP BV is a service provider specialized in Practical Food Innovation and due to increasing pressure from social organizations and changing consumer behavior, food producers are trying to reduce the sugar content in their products. Often sugars have a function and TOP BV from Wageningen, in the Netherlands, is now offering several solutions to enable the reduction of sugar.

At the start of this month, the Diabetes Fund started the Sugar Recall Action, in which consumers can send a signal to the food industry by recalling a product with unnecessary high sugar content. For a long time now Foodwatch has pointed out products with the unnecessary addition of sugars, and in several countries, the industry is forced to take measures by a sugar tax.

However, sugar has an essential function in many of these products. Sugar can mask sour tastes or increase the volume, but it can also reduce the water activity, thus improving the food safety of the product. Merely removing the sugar from a product can lead to the product having less taste or even becoming unsafe. Until recently there was no viable alternative for the industry.

Nick van Lanen, a Food Technologist from TOP BV, told: “We see that sugar reduction is an increasingly important topic for the food industry. This trend is fueled by consumers demanding reformulations or by simply choosing for lower sugar alternatives.”

There are many possibilities to decrease the amount of sugar in a lot of different products. However, it’s not always as easy as consumers think – sugar plays an essential functional role in most products. By using smart formulations a lot is possible though,” van Lanen says.

Obesity is a significant problem that has to be tackled from multiple angles. State, industry and consumers all have a role to play. “The sugar tax seems to work well for the UK, so we can see this working as an incentive for other countries to enforce a similar regulation. The industry can help by adopting clever reformulations to decrease the amount of (hidden) sugar in products. Finally, consumer awareness about the daily intake of sugar will have to increase,” he notes.

After extensive research, TOP BV has found smart, healthy and tasty formulas in which sugar can be completely replaced, while the microbiological safety, as well as the taste of the product, are preserved. Tests show that this formula is suitable for practically all sugar-containing products.