A New Technology Makes Sugar Twice As Sweet, So You Can Eat Half As Much

Trick your tongue into thinking you’re having a much sweeter treat that isn’t nearly as bad for you.

Maybe you won’t actually have to give up your Twinkie habit to lose weight. New food technology makes ordinary sugar twice as sweet—so food tastes exactly the same with half the calories, and without the controversy of artificial sweeteners.

By coating tiny food-safe particles with natural sugar like sucrose or glucose, the technology can trick the sweetness receptors on your tongue into thinking you’re eating a full serving. The startup behind the idea compares it to drug delivery in pharmaceuticals.

“Drug delivery allows you to take less of an active material and ship it to where you need it. . . . You ship less of it and you create less damage along the way,” says Eran Baniel, CEO of the Israel-based startup, DouxMatok. “We do flavor delivery. You take less of the active material—the active material being sugar in this case. But you still use sugar.”

Depending on the food, the technology cuts sugar by 25% to 55%.

That means it’s also cheaper than a normal recipe. “If the coated particle were the same sweetness as sugar, it would be more expensive, obviously,” he says. “But what we sell is sweetness equivalence. If I’m twice as sweet as sugar you need only half as much in order to have the same sweet effect. So we are cheaper.”

The sugar-carrying particle is already a commonly used food additive, so it doesn’t require new safety testing. DouxMatok has already started testing it with manufacturers and plans to soon begin licensing the technology.

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