R&D RADIO: The Real Science Behind Sugar Replacement with Icon Foods' Thom King

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1:15so there's eight primary functions of sugar so when you're replacing that you have to keep those things in mind like do you want your final product to brown do you want it to participate in my yard? Is it if it's a frozen dessert? Is freezing depression point an issue, overrun an issue? There's a lot of gaps that you're trying to fill. It's not as easy as like, hey, we're going to take an eighth of a gram of stevia and replace a cup of sugar because you're going to be losing so much mass. You're also going to be losing functionality too. So when you're replacing sugar, that's where the real food science begins because you're not looking to replace the sweetness as much as you're looking to replace the functionality.

1:59Sweetness is no big deal. You can find sweet things everywhere, but the functionality and making sure that it works within your product is key. Hey everyone, this is Adam Yee, food scientist and podcast host of Startup CPG's R &D Radio, where we interview food scientists and product developers and what they do and how they can help you build your CPG business. Today, I'm interviewing my friend for over a decade, Tom King, who founded the company Icon Foods. Icon Foods is a food science and ingredient innovation company helping emerging and established CPG brands create better-for-you products through clean label sugar reduction, functional sweetening systems, prebiotic fibers, and formulation expertise.

2:40For a startup CPG's community, Icon Foods brings the ingredient access, tactical know-how, and hands-on formulation support that can help founders turn a great kitchen bench idea into a scalable commercially viable product. Tom is a certified food scientist and one of the food and beverage industry's leaders on clean label sugar reduction and functional formulation. He holds a master's degree in food science from Cornell University and brings decades of hands-on experience developing commercially viable better for you food and beverage systems. As founder and chief innovation officer of Icon Foods, Tom leads innovation across rare sugars, high-intensity sweeteners, fiber systems, and sweetness modulation technologies, all of the topics that we'll get into in this podcast interview.

3:26His work focuses on solving one of the industry's most persistent challenges, how to remove sugar without compromising taste, texture, or consumer acceptance. His and his team's formulation strategies are widely used across the beverage, dairy, baked goods, confections, and emerging functional categories as well. I always admire Tom's pragmatic approach and systems-driven drive when it comes to solving these types of problems. Sugar is not just a sweetness, it's a structure, it has its ability, and it is, of course, a sensory experience. We're only scratching the surface of understanding how alternative sweeteners work, but I think Tom is on the forefront of it.

4:03His work centers around rebuilding those functions intelligently using modern ingredient systems that align with today's health-conscious consumers. So you're going to learn a ton for this interview. I found a lot of insights about how Tom thinks about replacing sugar with a suite of his solutions. You think of the common things like taste and textures, but you don't really think about things like browning or reactions, which all of these sugars have different ways of doing that. You also learn about the upcoming sugars in the market like tacatose and some of the problems that Tom encounters in the supply chain that might give you a deeper understanding of how sweeteners work as you develop your food product.

4:41Enjoy this episode with Tom. I'm sure you'll learn a lot.

4:46Tom King, we've known each other for probably over a decade, I would say, at this point. And it's good to have you on R &D Radio, my new podcast. Thanks, Adam. Yeah, love it. All right, so you've been in the sweetener game for a long time, and I'd love to hear a brief history of Icon Foods. Well, I mean, Icon Foods didn't really start out as Icon Foods. Icon Foods started out as Staviva Brands. And so I started the company in 1999, and we were one of the first companies to actually import stevial glycoside into the U.S. So we had a fairly strong retail presence, but my goal was actually to scale it into an ingredient company.

5:24And so we started making different types of blends. We were bringing in the stevia, but we were using stevia with erythritol, which made it more of a plug and play for people that were just looking to replace sugar. And then we really started moving into the food ingredient space. I would say that once we hooked up with Quest Nutrition, so we were part of their first bar and that was just, that's all there was. It was just the retail brand kind of got abandoned. We changed the name because we were getting pigeonholed into, oh, you're the Stevia company. So we changed the name of the company to Icon Foods and then expanded our portfolio into rare sugars and inclusions, fibers, you know, expanded our line of polyols to include organic coconut vegetable glycerin.

6:14And that's where we are today. So you guys are essentially experts in sweeteners or other types of add-ins for maybe confections or bars. Is that a good description? I would say that we really position ourselves more as an ingredient supplier for people that are developing or have better for you products. So we focus on high fiber, low sugar, and that's our wheelhouse. And we pretty much stay in the no added sugar game. Love it. And that's obviously been exploding. There's been a ton of better for your products in the space. I get pitched all the time for a product that they don't want sugar, so they want to replace it with certain sweeteners.

6:52And so that kind of brings me to that next question about sweeteners. And it's complex, right? Like substituting sugar for something that's different. And there's a lot of options. And I'd love to just briefly go over that in terms of how do you replace sugar in products? Yeah, that's a great question. And so, I mean, sugar has a lot of functionality. I mean, it drives down freezing depression point in frozen desserts. It activates yeast in bread, drives down, or with baked goods, drives down water activity. So there's eight primary functions of sugar. So when you're replacing that, you have to keep those things in mind.

7:30Like, do you want your final product to brown? Do you want it to participate in my yard? is if it's a frozen dessert, is freezing depression point an issue, overrun an issue? There's a lot of gaps that you're trying to fill. It's not as easy as like, hey, we're going to take an eighth of a gram of stevia and replace a cup of sugar because you're going to be losing so much mass. You're also going to be losing functionality too. So when you're replacing sugar, that's where the real food science begins because you're not looking to replace the sweetness as much as you're looking to replace the functionality.

8:06Sweetness is no big deal. You can find sweet things everywhere, but the functionality and making sure that it works within your product is key. Yeah, I think something that, for example, soda, and if you replace sugar, it takes a lot of the bulking effect, right? So not only does it taste good, but also you get kind of this texture that is hard to replace. So you need a combination of different things, right? I think probably the most popular one now is Olipop's like inulin plate with the chicken root. Yeah, they stack their fibers. And I mean, that's my forte is beverage, actually. When I look at a formula like Olipop, I mean, that's a super impressive formula because they're using a high-intensity sweetener.

8:44I think they're using like monk fruit, but they're using a fiber stack, right? So if you use just one fiber, let's say you were only using inulin and you want to be able to make a gut health claim, you're going to need six or seven grams in there in order for you to stay out of lawsuits and stuff. But with that load of fiber, you run the risk of a consumer only being able to have one because then it's like, well, are they going to have a second one? Because then it can trigger gas kinetics, upset stomach, bloating, disaster pants. I mean, those are the things you're trying to avoid. If you stack your fibers, which Olipop does, it spreads out that rate at which those fibers metabolize.

9:28And that allows you to put in more fiber in a smaller environment and not have to deal with the side effects of it. Another thing that it does, too, is these fibers gel. And so, like, if you drink a Diet Coke in comparison to a regular Coke, you're going to be like, yeah, they taste sort of familiar. But the experience of a real Coke is different because of the viscosity that sugar brings. So it really, like using fibers in conjunction with a high-intensity sweetener or even like a rare sugar, it will coat the tongue. It'll allow the experience of drinking that, that better-for-you beverage. It will mirror what happens with sugar, like the viscosity across the tongue, the same sweetness curve, the same decay rate.

10:12I mean, those fibers, I think, in beverage are brilliant. A hundred percent. You know, you have all these tools that replace essentially one ingredient, right? I'd love to understand a little bit about those tools. I think let's just start in general with taste. So here's a handful of alternative sweeteners like Cevia, Mockfruit, Erythritol, Maltitol if you're in the bar industry. I'd love to hear kind of your overview of the common alternative sweeteners used today. Well, I think that erythritol gets a bad rap because, you know, it was in some articles that said there was a correlation between erythritol and cardiac events, which, I mean, erythritol has been around for a really long time.

10:52There's over 600 studies that have proven it to be safe. It's been FDA grass status for 25 years. So I still think there's a lot of purpose to erythritol. I wouldn't use it in a beverage, but if you use it in like, say, a baked good or a bar where you're trying to drive down your water activity and extend your shelf life. It's a bulking agent, right? It is a bulking agent. So it's 70 % at Swedish sugar. The downside is it has like a slight cooling effect on the tongue, but I'm a big proponent of stacking sweeteners. So like if you use the Rititol to drive down your water activity and then you combo it up with allulose or tagatose to give it more of the viscosity and more of a real sugar taste to it.

11:40And then ease in like some high intensities like monk fruit or stevia. And a lot of times even using monk fruit with stevia works because when you combine those two glycosides, they actually trigger the receptors on your tongue that will block bitterness. Really? Yep. I didn't even know that. They cancel each other's off notes out, but does have masking properties. So if you're using a combination of like monk fruit and stevia, you probably have to increase your sweeteners or mere flavor somewhat because it will mute them. But in any application, just like layering them in. Erythritol, great for driving that water activity.

12:19If you want to do like a frosting or some sort of a coating that works brilliantly or fillings even. I would say in baked goods, probably a stronger sweetener in that environment would be allulose or tagatose because those are reducing sugars. You'll get some browning out of them. Let's talk a little bit about allulose. I think it's getting pretty popular. It's been a long time coming. I think I've worked with it for like five years, but it seems like nowadays it's popular. But there's also some regulatory things. I'd love to hear your thoughts on allulose in general. Well, I like allulose. It's probably my daily go-to.

12:56I usually use like allulose syrup on my coffee with some stevia. As far, like regulatory wise, I would say that there in the United States, there isn't any real height restrictions. I think the toxicology report that's attached to the grass application puts it at about five grams per 100 kilograms. So you can use quite a bit of it. Again, 70 % is sweet as sugar. You'd want to back it up with a high intensity sweetener. But I think that the real issue that people have with allulose is that Whole Foods doesn't accept it. And it's not allowed as a sweetener in Canada or Europe. So, and who knows when that's going to happen.

13:36But when I start working with a customer and a customer is like, yeah, we want to do a soft drink or even like a bar with allulose. I don't think that Whole Foods is as big of a concern as a lot of people would imagine it would be. They hold less than 2 % of the total grocery market share. When I look at like, okay, if I was going to do a bar, would I target this bar for Whole Foods or would I target this bar for Target? And it's like, from a retail perspective, I think Target is a lot juicier than Whole Foods. They're going to hold about four and a half, 5 % of the total grocery share and i think if your product makes it in target makes it an excellent runway for moving into kroger which that's going to be 33 of the market share and then imagine walmart right which is i think 50 right walmart's huge yeah like walmart costco i mean walmart gonna probably grind on you and margins are gonna go away it's a tough one yeah costco usually you have to make like a special pack size for them.

14:40Like, oh yeah, we got an 18 pack instead of a 12 pack. But you can totally move some product. But the folks that I work with, when they're trying to formulate for Whole Foods, I just remind them, it's like, that's a small share of the market you're trying to get into. Just target. Well, speaking of that, you know, you have all these options, especially you guys specialize in making blends for people. Yeah. And I just would love to hear the general conversation you have with brands who want to replace sugar. Well, I mean, it's a case by case basis because sugar does have a lot of functionality.

15:13Yeah. And so you always have to kind of keep that in mind. And I would say in the past four years, I have not gotten a single formula where somebody is asking for no added sugar. So I think the new target, I mean, that we're running into is five grams or under. Yes. Just a little bit of sugar is kind of the right. Just a little bit of sugar. And I'm telling you, it's like that little bit of sugar makes a formulator's job so much easier. I agree. Because you can lean into the functionality. And I mean, even like if you're going like four or five grams of sugar, it was a beverage. And you're like, hey, we just want to increase the perception of the sweetness of this sugar.

15:54You got options with like sweetness modulators like Thalmitin or Brazine or Monolin. Like there's a lot of like super high intensity protein based sweeteners that actually will trigger the T1. Was it the T1 2 R and T1 T2 R3 receptors on the palate that perceive sweetness, umami, sour, and I think bitter. But we were at IFT and I know you guys were at IFT too. Yep. And that you had an amazing smashing success there. This is what I heard. Our first time doing an event adjacent to IFT. We'd love to have you next time. We're definitely going to do it again. I would love to be involved. Yeah. So at IFT, we were actually doing, we did AB samples.

16:44Like we sampled a beverage that was, I would say, tasted like a real watered down Gatorade. And then we added a protein-based sweetness modulator at 20 parts per million. And it completely changed the perception of sweetness. Like people that would A-B test it were like, wow, yeah, this tastes like Gatorade now. Yeah. I just want to get really quick on this specific topic, the brazine and these modulators. Thalmitin. Yeah, Thalmitin. A lot of brands don't know this. It's because they can be labeled as natural flavors. Yeah. So they could be labeled as natural flavors. I mean, we've got some blends.

17:18I've worked with Thalmitin for probably close to 10 years. And it's been difficult because a lot of developers, a lot of like, I would say, brands that want to start, you know start a beverage or something or like get us the thalmitin and i'm like uh look you don't understand like thalmitin like you could take thalmitin right and put 20 parts per million in like a glass of water and you would be like this is not sweet there is nothing sweet about it followed by five minutes later you'll be like i can't get this sweet taste out of my mouth So the onset with Thalmatin is at the very end of the experience.

17:57So if you're going to use Thalmatin or you're going to use a protein-based modulator like that, I would highly recommend that you have a backbone of either sugar or some other bulking type sweetener and even a high-intensity sweetener to bring that pop at the front end. because if you tried using Talmudin, you're going to be highly, highly disappointed with the results. So there seems to be a lot of tools in this toolbox. Even I don't know a lot of these, honestly. I ask people for like, oh, can I have this and this? And does this work? Right. I assume you guys have done a lot of research and application testing on all of these types of sweeteners, right?

18:38Yeah, from beverages, the frozen desserts, to bars, chocolates, all of it. I mean, for folks that are starting a brand, I think it's essential to define what that product is and where you want to land in the market. And I mean, if it's going to be sweet, then start planning out the system that you're going to use. And then go to a professional formulator, food scientist to get it goal lined. Because while it will cost you some money to do that, in the end, it's going to save you so much more money because you're not going to have to keep going back to the bench. I run into this all the time. I'll get a founder who like hits us up and it's like, oh, I've got these really terrible off notes and I've got, you know, like we're doing a high protein and I'm getting sulfur coming through.

19:24And when I look at the formula, I'm just like, where did you get this done? He's like, oh, I'm doing it in my kitchen. It's like, I get that, right? I can see that. Yeah. Yeah. And this is the difference between a formula and a recipe, like a recipe you do in a kitchen, a formula is scalable. But I just encourage people, if you get an idea, go to a good formulator. They're worth their weight in gold. So let's talk about this new sweetener kind of bubbling up. I've been hearing it quite a lot. I think our mutual friend Rachel Zemzer talks about it all the time. It's called Tagatos. I mean, even some of my clients are interested in it now.

19:59So I'd love to hear what Tagatos is and I guess your thoughts on that unique and new sweetener. Well, Rachel is the queen of Tagatos. I got a lot of texts from her about it. Love her. So tagatose can either be, I mean, it can be made from lactose, which ours is, or it can be made from enzymatically hydrolyzation through starch. So with lactose, how is it made into tagatose? So lactose is treated with an enzyme, right? And this enzyme breaks apart the galactose. and the galactose is then treated like microbially it's a microbe it's like fermented right so it's fermented and that actually create the tagatose and once you've got the tagatose in its natural form it's going to be a syrup and so then you go through an actual natural crystallization process to make those crystals so when you think about i mean there's other steps that are in there too like filtering and washing and stuff.

21:05And then, I mean, I have a flow chart on it, but basically you're breaking the bond, the galactose and the lactose, and then you're converting that lactose to tagtose. And then the tagtose is then crystallized. And then think of it just a super saturated state where you start getting crystals. And that's, it's very similar to allulose because allulose goes through the same process and that's where the inefficiencies come in. Like if you're using tagato syrup or allulose syrup, super easy, going to cost you less money than the crystals. But when you go to crystallize it, I mean, you're either going to be using a reactor or using a natural crystallization process.

21:46And that's where the inefficiencies come in. I mean, that's the manufacturing. That's how it's made. When you bring it into like a food environment, I would say that it works amazingly well in baked goods with the exception because it's a reducing sugar. It goes into Maillard and it goes into Maillard faster than probably fructose or some other reducing sugars. So you would have to reduce your bake temp and increase your bake time. Otherwise, you're going to it's going to scorch. OK, so burn easier. It burns easier or burn faster. Yeah, it burns faster, is more sensitive to burning. So that's one thing you would want to watch out for.

22:27I mean, you can also add a polyol to sort of reduce that. You could use erythritol, but I mean, the unicorn that I always go to is vegetable glycerin. Oh, yeah. That's a good one. It's underrated. It's very underrated. I will say that. It is so underrated. Yeah. So often, I mean, through the week, I'll have somebody like, yeah, my bar is turning into a brick after six months. And I'm like, oh, just put in some glycerin at 2%. It's literally free real estate. It's like, yeah, it's an 8 % limit generally. Yeah, you don't even need that much. Like you could drop in 2 % into a bar. But yeah, if you're running into a situation where you have a baked good and this baked good is like, it's just getting too crumbly, just turn to vegetable glycerin.

23:11Start out at 2 % to 3%, titrate up if you need to. But that's going to do so much. It's not going to add to your water activity. It's actually going to drop your water activity, but it's going to give the perception of moisture. it is the unsung hero of formulating i mean i wouldn't put it in a beverage i mean you could put it in a beverage depending on like if it was like a protein like if you're doing like a 30 or 42 gram rtd protein drink i would say definitely use a little bit of vegetable glycerin in it but if you're doing a baked good and it's like hey this is burning or scorching two percent titrate up if you need to but that will get you out of the woods yeah at least glycerin has surprisingly very clean label so a lot of people accept it as clean label it's very cheap honestly it is right so the final topic i want to get into is supply chain i think one example like monk fruit can be pretty difficult or i had no idea essentially is that it goes all over the place whenever i ask for it yeah monk fruit is seasonal so if you're using monk fruit generally the harvest will happen in september october and so i mean if you're using a lot of monk fruit, keep an eye on the market because you want to make sure that you buy at the right time.

24:23And once you'll start seeing the prices come down, usually they start coming down in August when they get a projection of what the crop's going to be. Like this year, the crop is smaller in acreage, but more, I would say, higher in fruit. So it looks like it'll probably be stable. That's on the monk fruit side of it though. So the crop comes in September, they usually are done processing it in October. And then that's like October-ish, November-ish, that's when you want to pull the trigger because they're going to be trying to get rid of the previous year stock. That's when you'll see the prices start to dip a little bit.

25:00By the time you run into middle of Q1, you start seeing the prices come up and then they'll usually follow that cycle up till maybe July when they hit just this peak threshold where nobody will buy it anymore because it's too expensive. And then it does that cycle every year. So when we're talking with customers about monk fruit, generally we're like, okay, so let's right about the end of August, it's like, we've got visibility on the crops. Let's pull the trigger. Let's get you locked into a 2027 rate and set it and forget it. Got it. With stevia, stevia crop, super solid this year. Prices will probably stay flat, maybe dip a little bit, particularly in Reb-M because the stevia leaf extracts, more of those crops are leaning heavy into Reb-M production.

25:54And then you've also got the competition with all of the bioengineered fermented Reb-Ms, which are great. But if you're looking to do something organic, the leaf extract is, I think, a better place to go. The supply chain on it's pretty stable. I'd say allulose supply chain's very stable. Tagitos is one that's becoming more stable. I think that some of the overseas, like in Europe, they're kind of allocated out right now, but that's, it is scaling. Like Tagitos is scaling. Erythritol, I would say the supply chain on Erythritol is kind of tricky right now because Cargill, yeah, because Cargill won their anti-dumping and countervailing petition.

26:36And so we're burning off a ton of material that's still in the United States and got to the United States before the anti-dumping tariff went in. But that's going to be a tricky one. I think people can pick it up reasonably cheap for through the probably the end of the year. 2027, I would say is going to be a mixed bag. You might get some drips and drabs. If you're looking to fill a pipeline throughout 2027, I would start planning that right now. So, Ryan, this is like a huge, like, kind of uncracking of what goes on in this industry specifically. Oh, it's crazy. Yeah. I didn't expect to go here.

27:16How do you get all this information? Like, well, I'm sure it's a job, but like. That's a good question. So we've got supplier relationships. So we're different than Cargill. Like Cargill is going to produce their own erythritol. When they're allocated, they're done. Nobody gets erythritol. We have at least three supply chain partners for every spec that we carry because it gives us that flexibility where we can pivot to one supplier. It also gives us the ability to negotiate with suppliers a little deeper. But we've got great relationships and we've got boots on the ground. And we're like, how's the corn crop looking?