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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: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Friday September 08 2017, @03:35PM
We do this. We pick wild sumac (it looks like the first image on this page [google.com].) in Prospect Park in NYC and brew it up like sun tea. Then we run it through a fine mesh sieve and sweeten it with stevia. We bottle it, cool it in the fridge, and carbonate it with our SodaStream. It's delicious. Somewhere between ginger ale and cherry juice. It's chock full of vitamin C, too. My kids clamor for it, and from August when it ripens through October when our supplies run out we buy no soda or any other juice at all.
It grows all over NE America through the upper Midwest.
Washington DC delenda est.