Can Monk Fruit Save The Juice Drink Industry?

I agree with Ian Quin that monk fruit is a potential “breakthrough” natural sweetener ("Sweet and Innocent?", 9 Aug, p24. The Grocer). Named for the Chinese Buddhist monks who cultivated it for centuries, monk fruit is part of a basket of fruit and herbs (that includes ginger, jujube, rhubarb and osmanthus) used in China in traditional medicine and everyday food & drink.

The U.S. FDA first granted zero calorie monk fruit approval back in 2010 and it’s been in use since in a number of countries outside of Asia under brand names like Nectresse, Monk Fruit in the Raw, Fruit Sweetness, Sweet-Delicious, and PureLo. Monk fruit sweetened drinks have less of the perceived bitter liquorice aftertaste of stevia particularly in juice based applications, hence it’s potential. [It surprised me a bit during a panel discussion at FoodVision in March - summarised in a BeverageDaily article - just how little awareness there was for the fruit and its potential within the industry.]

An increased consciousness about healthy nutrition and the role natural products play in helping us to live better is driving a huge shift to more recognisable (in nature) food & drink ingredients. It is the same for sweeteners. It took EFSA more than 10 years to approve stevia. They need to ignore pressure from artificial sweetener and sugar lobby groups and work faster on reviewing/approving monk fruit derivatives for use in Europe.

The availability of naturally sourced sugar substitutes like monk fruit may be key to both helping to solve the obesity crisis and stemming the haemorrhage of juice-drink sales.......and yes, EFSA approval could fit quite nicely into the next generation of refreshingly delicious, low sugar Tg iced green teas already brimming with ancient wellness ingredients from the "Middle Kingdom" (see Drinktg.com).

Can monk fruit save the juice drink industry? Not on its own but, along with stevia, it can certainly inject more naturalness into desperately seeking lower calorie/sugar formulations and may go some way to improving taste profiles of now stevia-sweetened drinks.

Comments

Is Kraft Heinz dropping the Unilever acquisition just an interlude?

(c) 2012 Convergence Alimentaire blog image I cut my FMCG marketing teeth at Unilever and ended my full-time global food & drink industry career at Kraft/Mondelez. I now run a healthier drinks startup business ( drinktg.com ) alongside a global innovation consultancy where I work as an "extrapreneur" supporting companies wanting to remake their portfolios to better fit emerging consumer needs for healthier products......so I am perhaps in a unique position to give a point of view. If you are Dutch or British, you feel closer culturally to Unilever and few people living in the UK will have forgotten Kraft's poor treatment of people & assets post Cadbury's acquisition . However, the reality is that the vision and values of both companies are not so dissimilar and both are facing the same fundamental shifts in consumer behaviour & needs in relation to "big FMCG/CPG" brands in both developed a...

Sophia Nadur presenting at the 2017 Food Vision Asia conference

I am pleased to be presenting at the Food Vision Asia conference in Singapore 26th April 2017, on the topic of "East meets West meets East. Tapping plant wellness for new beverage segments" which will also showcase Tg green teas - considered a leading beverage platform for translating ancient TCM wellness traditions into mass-market drinks. East meets West meets East. Tapping plant wellness for new beverage segments People instinctively know the value of consuming plant-based food and drink; they feel it’s good for their health and for the planet, its animals, climate and the environment. In recent years, however, increased availability of highly processed products, largely marketed by Western companies, has broken the connection with indigenous plant-based diets for Asia’s millennial consumers. At the same time, on the other side of the world the West is experiencing a fundamental consumer shift towards vegetarian, vegan and other plant-based formulations. S...

Is sugar the new tobacco? Yes!....unless we do more

Ian Quinn 's article in The Grocer , " FDF head calls out NHS boss over sugar claims " [subscription may be required] covers the Food and Drink Federation's response to a comment NHS head Simon Stevens ' made in a BBC interview over the weekend in which he suggested the obesity crisis was the " new smoking ". Soft Drink and Tobacco parallels As someone who’s worked in both the soft drink and tobacco industries , I empathise with Simon Stevens linking obesity with smoking. After sitting through thousands of interviews with smokers up and down the country talking about obstacles to quitting tobacco etc. – and observing numerous food & drink consumer research before and since then – it’s clear that there are huge parallels between triggers of the emerging obesity crisis and smoking e.g. pitched initially as “ cool ” and a “ lifestyle/generational choice ” (especially soft drinks ) but later becoming hard to shak...

FMCG Innovations and Trends by Sophia Nadur

Search This Blog