Reducing our unhealthy over-dependence on sugary formulations

DAVIS, Calif., Nov. 18, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Recent Federal public policy efforts to reduce sugar in school lunch programs, investigating the definition of Ultra Processed Foods, the explosive growth of weight-loss GLP-1 drug use and MAHA's moves to force the removal of artificial food colors from packaged foods are just the tip of the transition iceberg. These events, including Walmart's recent decision to remove these colors from their private label products, are all fueling industry momentum towards a packaged food and beverage reformulation renaissance. Underlying the ingredient changes coming in processed food is a pressing, deepening public health crisis. The poster child target in this emerging formulation reset is over-consumption of added sugars.

Bottom line, healthier choices in what people consume is gaining ground as a primary business demand driver. For more than a decade now the food and beverage industry has been searching for reliable, cost-effective improvements in sweetening solutions that don't come with embedded taste, health or cost deficits. The requirement for a new sweetness 'operating system' (OS) is needed to solve overwhelming evidence that continued hyper-consumption of sugar in the global diet will directly contribute to the alarming increases in heart disease, diabetes, hyper-tension and obesity.

Finally, that advanced sweetening OS solution has arrived with a memorable and sticky new brand name – Oobli. This discovery matters because overconsumption of sugar undermines metabolic, cardiovascular, and oral health while promoting weight gain and chronic inflammation. Replacing sugary formulations with healthier sweetening alternatives – like Oobli's protein-sweetening ingredient -- can help change the consumption outcomes in a way that the food and beverage industry will appreciate because consumers are more likely to adopt, enjoy and re-purchase. 

"We now have an opportunity to change the trajectory of human health and wellbeing with a better and more nourishing form of sweetness from sweet proteins. The recent explosion of GLP-1 therapies to treat obesity and diabetes comes at the cost of a lifetime commitment to taking these drugs for continued benefit," said Oobli's Founder & CTO Dr. Jason Ryder, also an Adjunct Professor at UC Berkeley.

"Since World War II the packaged food & beverages industry has largely been focused on convenience, introducing skyrocketing levels of sugar into our diets. This has, in turn, created a spike in preventable chronic diseases along with the unsustainable healthcare costs required to treat them. GLP-1 is symptomatic of our tendency to react to health problems rather than proactively seeking real change."

Timing couldn't be better for Oobli's novel sweet protein formulation answer to emerge given the already well-documented public health threats. What does the World Health Organization (WHO), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and Harvard School of Public Health tell us about the impact of consuming overly sugary foods and beverages?

• Regular intake of high-sugar foods and drinks leads to repeated spikes in blood glucose, forcing the pancreas to produce large amounts of insulin. Studies show each daily consumption of 120 to 140 calorie 12-oz sugary drink increases diabetes risk by about 25%.
• People who consume more than 20% of daily calories from added sugars have nearly double the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease compared with those consuming less than 10%. How? Excess sugar increases blood pressure, triglycerides, inflammatory markers, and LDL ("bad") cholesterol, while lowering HDL ("good") cholesterol—all of which elevate risk for heart disease and stroke.
• Sugary drinks, particularly those containing fructose (like high-fructose corn syrup), increase liver fat accumulation — a precursor to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).
• Recently recognized by Fast Company Magazine as a winner of their 2025 World Changing Ideas award, Davis, CA-based Oobli cracked the sweetening code by figuring out how to produce at massive scale these sugar-like sweet-proteins found largely in fruits and berries around the Equator.

Their proprietary manufacturing process employs fermentation, an ancient food and beverage making technology – think wine, beer, cheese -- now updated for the modern era through bioengineering. What Oobli has wrought is a nature-identical, plant-derived but fermentation grown sweetener that is not a carb. It is a protein, and the human body recognizes and digests it as such. Most other sweetening solutions – artificial or natural - are carbohydrates like sugar. Known as 'small-molecule' sweeteners, sugar and sugar-like small-molecule sweeteners are quickly absorbed in the digestive system and knock hard at the front door of glycemic impacts, blood sugar spikes and gut disruption. What's more these sweetening alternatives tend to come with vexing taste issues that usually require laboratory wizardry to mask and improve.

Five hundred to a thousand (or more) times sweeter than sugar, just one gram of Oobli can displace up to 1,000 grams of regular sugar. This potentially transformative, patented answer to sugar-like sweetness is the first and only commercial scale sweet protein ingredient in the world to also secure all the necessary GRAS certifications for several of these natural-identical sweet proteins use in our food system. There's a bonus -- Oobli sweet proteins also come with a hefty side order of climate reduction benefits, that can help transform the significant carbon footprint of the sweetening industry. "If we're able to displace just 1% of sugar use in the food system, we would save 525,000 acres of increasingly scarce farmland, reduce carbon emissions by a million metric tons and save 88 million gallons of precious fresh-water resources." said Ali Wing, CEO of Oobli.

Oobli has already earned the attention of food industry heavyweights including the largest baked goods company on earth, BIMBO, Mars the largest sweet treats company, and leading global food ingredient distribution company Ingredion -- who are supporters, investors and collaborators on a host of new products currently moving in the innovation pipeline.

"Ingredion is committed to advancing innovation that helps brands deliver better nutrition without compromising taste," said Nate Yates, VP and GM Sugar Reduction and Fiber Fortification, CEO Pure Circle at Ingredion. "Our collaboration with Oobli on sweet proteins represents an exciting step forward in sugar reduction—one that aligns with our broader mission to enable healthier choices across the food and beverage industry."

As public policy works to tackle the ultra-processed foods challenge, Oobli may be the just-in-time operating system addition the food and beverage industry requires to help improve recipes and formulations in a way that measurably enhances the wellbeing of people without adding cost – a significant issue for people trying to manage their rising family food budgets.

The magic in here is sugar-like sweetening that is a protein, and right there enabling sweetness without the metabolic downsides of too much sugar in so many products people repeatedly consume. For food and beverage makers this presents an extraordinary opportunity to do the right thing without taking risks on eating experience trade-offs. What people want is healthier and more sustainable foods and beverages without a taste or cost sacrifice. What the food and beverage industry needs is an ingredient swap out that is easier to work with and delivers on taste. Sounds like a potential good marriage in the making.

Want to know more about Oobli? Check out their web site at oobli.com and order some of their protein-sweetened chocolate bars if you want to give it a try.

Contact: Bob Wheatley
Bob@Emergent-comm.com
Mobile: 312-806-6975

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-next-generation-os-of-sweetening-has-arrived-302617639.html

SOURCE Oobli