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Coca-Cola is using the HeroX crowd-sourcing platform to hold a $1 million competition for a new sugar substitute:
"Sugar is now the number one item that consumers want to avoid in their diets," says Darren Seifer, a food and beverage industry analyst with the NPD Group. The message to consume less is coming from health experts around the globe.
It's a challenge for the beverage industry, as is the fact that many consumers don't like the idea of artificial sweeteners found in diet drinks. So, the search for new, alternative sweeteners that can appeal to consumers' changing tastes is in full swing. And Coca-Cola has turned to crowd-sourcing.
The company has launched a competition on the crowd-sourcing platform HeroX. According to this description on Coca-Cola's corporate website, Coke is seeking "a naturally sourced, safe, low- or no-calorie compound that creates the taste sensation of sugar when used in beverages." The company says, "one grand prize winner will be awarded $1 million in October 2018."
So, can scientists come up with this kind of sweetener? "Well, this is a hundred-million dollar question, because it's so difficult and so potentially lucrative," says Paul Breslin, a professor in the nutritional sciences department at Rutgers University and a member of the Monell Chemical Senses Center.
Hang on, is it a one million dollar question or a hundred-million dollar question? Maybe I should get Silicon Valley to fund my sugar substitute instead of Coca-Cola.
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(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Friday September 08 2017, @02:52PM
This press release is weird on many levels
Well, which is it? They don't want sugar so we want something that tastes just like good old sugar. OK then.
Consumers tastes are changing and now they don't like ground up insects in their applesauce. Naturally our corporate reaction to that changing consumer interest, is we'd like to create an artificial flavoring that tastes just like bugs and looks like bug legs, so we can add it to otherwise clean applesauce to make it look and taste like buggy applesauce. You know, because customers don't like that, so we'll give them what they don't want, like Hollywood or prime time TV. WTF?
Sales figures disagree emphatically. Sales figures for disgustingly sweet sugar products aren't bad either... So this whole thing is fake caring. If you want to do fake caring the right way, make a ribbon for car trunk lids that looks like sugar and have a Chinese factory sell it to rubes to "increase awareness" and be done with it. This whole press release is faker than saccharine.
Never seen scientists as "the crowd" anymore, although that is kinda cool. I was worried there for a minute they'd be crowdsourcing to the general public, which would result in discovering the earth is flat and jet fuel can't melt steel beams (like that UK apartment building that didn't collapse a couple months ago).
I think everyone who tries alternative diets has the experience of seeing "low carb" or "gluten free" on the product packaging, then they try the product and it tastes like a chemical plant took a shite in their mouth. That leads to incredible negative publicity about the diet, why all low carb products taste like a re-enactment of 2G1C, so anyone on that diet must be an ascetic holiness signalling moron. However, in reality, real low carb or GF food such as a perfectly grilled juicy steak or a delicious salad actually tastes pretty good. The output of chemical waste plant, despite being GF or low carb, does not necessarily taste good.
I have no interest in chugging a canned drink that tastes like either raw molasses or chemical waste poorly imitating raw molasses. I would be interested in buying a less sweet drink. Occasionally I'll make my own lime-ade with just a dash of sugar to take the edge off the acidity (probably 1/10th the amount of "real" lemonade or "real" limeade) and that tastes pretty good. Heck sometimes I'll go so crazy as to throw a lemon wedge in my water glass with no sugar at all, how... unthinkable. I would like to experience a sugar free root beer sometime. Not a root beer made with disgusting artificial sweeteners but literally sweetener free (or at least reduced).
There is one "natural energy" lime and green tea energy drink that I occasionally consume that is sugar and artificial flavoring free, although its a bit of an acquired taste. I'm the only person in my family who can stomach them, in fact. But they're pretty good once you get used to lime and tea and its convenient when I don't have the time to brew up a pot of tea.