Food Business News - November 6, 2012 - 45

Ingredient nnovations Ingredient Innovations Ingredient Innovations ient ons

Monk fruit
makes its move
P
repare to hear more about another natural highintensity sweetener. While stevia extracts began gaining acceptance as a sweetener in foods and beverages in 2008, extracts from monk fruit, also known as luo han guo, appear set to impact the sweetener market now. The new high-intensity sweetener, like extracts from stevia leaves, is from a natural source, has no calories and is several hundred times sweeter than sucrose. Suppliers of monk fruit say the products have fewer taste issues. “Monk fruit is arguably a better tasting product,” said Chris Tower, president of Layn USA, Newport Beach, Calif., which is involved in both stevia extracts and monk fruit extracts. “Stevia largely needs to be masked with other ingredients.” While stevia suppliers focus on extracting Rebaudioside A, one of the sweetest steviol glycosides of the stevia leaf, suppliers of monk fruit deal with about a dozen mogrosides, which are also glycosides, Mr. Tower said. “Mogroside V is arguably the sweetest one,” he said. Layn USA offers monk fruit sweeteners under a Gu-Luo trademark. They are up to 350 times sweeter than sucrose. The sweeteners have mogroside V levels ranging from 20% to 50%. Gu-Luo has been shown to reduce sugar in applications by 50% through the addition of monk fruit extract at 0.5% along with additional water to make up for lost volume, Mr. Tower said. The company also offers Lovia, which is a blend of Rebaudioside A extracted from stevia leaves and mogroside V extracted from monk fruit. Lovia’s sweetness ranges from 30 times to 100 times that of sucrose. By weakening the bitter compounds in stevia and using the front end sweetness of monk fruit, Lovia provides a rounded, longer lasting sweetness in products, according to Layn USA. London-based Tate & Lyle offers Purefruit, a monk fruit extract. Manufacturing includes a water-based extraction process along with ﬁltration to clean the extracts’ taste and leave no bitter or metallic off-taste, said Jeremy Thompson, product manager of Purefruit. The monk fruit extract is spraydried to facilitate its use in a range of food and beverage applications, according to Tate & Lyle. When using monk fruit, food and beverage companies may consider price. “Monk fruit is more expensive on a kilo basis when compared to stevia,” Mr. Tower said,

COURTESY OF LAYN USA

Fruit extract joins stevia in the natural sweetener market

and explained it costs more to cultivate. Layn USA is a subsidiary of Guilin Layn Natural Ingredients Corp. in China. Monk fruit is grown in Guilin, a province in China, Mr. Tower said. An established farming base has grown the fruit for use in hot tea in China, and acreage may scale up if demand requires it. “That’s obviously hugely important,” Mr. Tower said. Tate & Lyle has teamed with BioVittoria Ltd. for its supply of monk fruit. BioVittoria, based in New Zealand, has a grower network of about 3,000 members based around Guilin in China’s Northern Guangxi Province. In the past two years BioVittoria has increased supply by about three to four times, Mr. Thompson said. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Jan. 15, 2010, issued a “no objection” letter to BioVittoria relating to the

Generally Recognized As Safe (GRAS) status of monk fruit extracts for use as sweeteners and ﬂavor enhancers in foods, excluding meat and poultry products. The F.D.A. on April 11, 2011, issued a “no objection” letter to Guilin Layn Natural Ingredients Corp. relating to the GRAS status of monk fruit extracts for use as sweeteners and ﬂavor enhancers in foods, excluding meat and poultry products. Tate & Lyle and BioVittoria supply monk fruit extracts to McNeil Nutritionals, L.L.C., Fort Washington, Pa., for its Nectresse, a new tabletop sweetener that includes monk

November 6, 2012

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