As trusted experts in providing innovative sweetener solutions for food and beverage manufacturers, we work with a lot of companies that share common challenges when it comes to formulation with stevia. Sometimes selecting the right ingredients for a formulation can either make or break a product. More often than not, the knowledge needed to formulate with newer, unfamiliar ingredients like stevia is hard to come by.
The SoPure Stevia team is excited to be launching our new initiative to address these marketplace challenges. Based on our highly successful industry seminars, Formulas For Success is a monthly educational series from our leading formulation experts that covers the basics and fundamentals of trends in product formulation. Each time we’ll be featuring an emerging ingredient or combination of ingredients and sharing the key tips you’ll need to discover your own formula for success.
Stevia + Allulose = The Sweet New Couple
In this inaugural edition of Formulas for Success, we’re highlighting one of the fastest-rising low-calorie sweeteners that everyone is asking about — Allulose. Allulose has quickly gained traction with food and beverage manufacturers due to recent FDA guidance which allows the ingredient to be exempted from total and added sugar counts in nutrition labeling. This makes allulose an ideal sugar substitute for formulators looking to achieve cleaner labels and sugar reduction.
Allulose is about 62% as sweet as sugar and provides a lot of upfront sweetness which means it can act as a great formulation partner to stevia, which has a later onset of sweetness. From our experience, an allulose + stevia combination is particularly effective in formulations where bulking is required, such as baking or confectionery applications. This is due to allulose’s ability to replicate and replace the texture and mouthfeel of sugar. In baking, we have found allulose to brown faster and spread less than sugar, so it requires some slight adjustments in formulation to reproduce traditional sugar-laden recipes.
Allulose Formulation Considerations
Cost is up to 4X the price of sugar and due to its lower sweetness intensity, the cost per unit of sweetness becomes even higher. When combined with stevia, the cost per unit sweetness becomes more manageable, though it may still be more than that of sugar.
Allulose is not digested by the body very well and in some cases, may cause gastrointestinal irritation and discomfort. Formulators will need to be mindful on usage when formulating for products with high consumption potentials.
Allulose has usage limits for food and beverages, as explained above, and further detailed on our SoPure website here. Supplements can utilize levels above those limits but off-notes may become more apparent when above the suggested usage limits.
Our testing with allulose and stevia combinations has revealed that the initial taste of a product tends to be perceived as sweeter but will level off over repeated and continued consumption. Taste adaptation is more noticeable in this combination rather than on their own or when compared to other combinations.
Sample Stevia + Allulose Formulation
To illustrate stevia + allulose in action, we designed a sample formula where we combined allulose with Reb A 99 and our new DGS Flavor TN in a confectionary product.
This dark chocolate was exhibited at SSW 2019 and highlights a wide variety of ingredients from the Nascent Health Sciences portfolio including PQQ, Inositol and Vitamin E. The chocolate debuted to rave industry reviews at the event and serves as an excellent demonstration of how stevia and allulose can make an ideal pairing.
For some more in-depth details on the functionality of allulose, its nutritional information, and other important characteristics of this increasingly popular sweetener, visit our allulose application support page.
Need the recipe for the sugar free dark chocolate morsels? Or ready to create your own formula for success? If you’re interested in learning more about formulating with allulose and stevia, contact one of our expert consultants for your product development and formulation needs!
Inositol is a Beneficial Food Additive for Many Reasons
When it comes to the world of food additives, people can be a little wary. Everyone has experienced that sense of bewilderment when they look at the nutritional facts of an item only to see that half of the ingredients seem to be substances that are six syllables long and sound like they come from an alien language. However, once people take the time to look into the items that they are ingesting, often times they will find that supplements that once seemed intimidating in nature are actually proven to be rather beneficial when added to foods that we eat. Here at Nascent Health, we strive to be as transparent as possible with the food additives that we produce. We design our additives to be as beneficial as possible to the consumer and, in today’s post, we are going to go over one of our food additives that we feel brings more to the table than people may realize: Inositol. Continue reading below to learn more.
What is Inositol?
Inositol is a pseudovitamin that is often compared members of the vitamin B complex. Inositol is found in many foods, particularly in fruit such as cantaloupe and oranges. Inositol has been shown to benefit humans’ bodies in many different ways and has been shown to help transport fat through the body and aid the neurons of the central nervous system. Below, we have listed a few more of the health benefits associated with inositol.
Lower Cholesterol: One of the most beneficial effects of inositol on the human body is the fact that it helps to lower cholesterol. It accomplishes this feat by combining with choline, an essential nutrient found in the body, to produce lecithin. Lecithin is essential for the task of breaking down fats within the human body and helps to prevent fat buildups in the cell walls of the heart’s, arteries, and the brain. In layman’s terms, inositol helps to reduce the overall amount of fat in the body. With less fat in the bloodstream, cholesterol tends to fall also.
Hair Health: Few parts of the human body get fussed over as much as hair. When you really start to think about it, the amount of time, money, and energy that the average person puts into the upkeep of their hair is quite remarkable. While there are thousands of products available that claim to increase the health of your hair or promise to make your hair as lustrous as possible, far fewer can actually deliver the results that they promise. Inositol, however, is one substance that has been shown time and time again to help increase the health of hair. Because inositol is so closely related to the vitamin B family, it has been shown to increase the strength of hair and helps hair to grow faster.
Help With Diabetes: As we touched upon earlier, inositol has been shown to have a positive impact on the body of cells. While this has shown to help cholesterol levels, recent studies have shown that inositol may also help people suffering from diabetic neuropathy, a nerve disease and one of the most common complications associated with diabetes. Considering that most of the decreased nerve function is caused by a loss of inositol in the cell, increasing the amount of inositol that is consumed can help to restore these cells to a healthier state. While the supplement will not cure diabetic neuropathy, it can help to abate the symptoms when used in conjunction with other therapy methods.
Stabilize Mood: Most recently, promising results surrounding inositol and the treatment of depression have been making waves in the medical community. It has been shown that individuals that have low levels of inositol in the body are less likely to suffer from depression, anxiety, or bipolar disorder. It is thought that inositol helps people with their mental health because it helps in the production of serotonin.
We hope that this short blog post has shown all of our readers exactly how important inositol can be as a food additive. If you would like to learn more about our pure inositol or any of the other food additive products that we offer, please visit our website today. At Nascent Health, we are dedicated to providing the best products possible and we are certain that once you experience the quality of our products you will never want to go with another food additive supplier again.
Pyrroloquinoline Quinone is an Important Micronutrient
Here at Nascent Health, we realize that pyrroloquinoline quinone is not something that people think about all that often. In fact, we would be willing to be that the vast majority of people on this planet aren’t even aware that pyrroloquinoline quinone exists. While this is understandable, we still feel that it is our duty here at Nascent Health to educate as many people about the products that we offer. In today’s post, to shed some more light on the mysterious micronutrient know as pyrroloquinoline quinone, we are going to go over the history of PQQ and its applications in the modern world. We hope that by the end of this post all of our readers have a better understanding of what PQQ is, what it is used for, and why it is an excellent addition to any diet.
PQQ Was Discovered Relatively Recently
Discovered roughly 20 years ago by J. G. Hauge, pyrroloquinoline quinone is the third redox cofactor discovered by researchers in bacteria. Redox cofactors are an essential component of the metabolic process. While metabolism involves a wide range of chemical reactions, most fall under a few basic types of reactions that involve the transfer of functional groups (specific groups of atoms or bonds within a molecule that are responsible for the chemical reactions of those molecules). Through these chemical processes, cells within the body are able to use a small set of metabolic intermediates to transport chemical groups between different reactions. While this all might sound really intricate and scientific, basically it just means that PQQ is used within the body to activate cell signal pathways that are involved in cellular energy metabolism, helping the body effectively transport and use the energy from ingested food.
What Else Does Pyrroloquinoline Quinone Affect?
PQQ is important for a number of processes within cells, however, one effect that it has within the body is often considered more important than others. In a recent study, it was found that PQQ plays a critical role in the growth and development of mitochondria within the cell and helps to protect mitochondria from oxidative stress. With PPQ present, it was found that spontaneous mitochondrial biogenesis occurred within cells. Additionally, it has been found that PQQ is a neuroprotective compound that has been shown in initial studies to protect cognition and memory function in humans and mice. Research has shown that PQQ can reverse cognitive impairment caused by prolonged oxidative stress and help improve memory test performance. Pyrroloquinoline quinone accomplishes this by stimulating the production and release of nerve growth factors in cells that help to support neurons within the brain. This discovery has opened a whole new avenue of research in relation to PQQ and is currently being studied by researchers as a possible treatment for certain cases of brain damage.
What Does the Future Hold for PQQ?
Continuing in the same vein as the above paragraph, pyrroloquinoline quinone is currently being studied for any potential applications it may have in the treatment or reversal of certain types of brain damage. Specifically, PQQ has been shown to be able to prevent the self-oxidation of the DJ-1 protein, an early indicator of the onset of some forms of Parkinson’s disease. Additionally, PQQ has been shown to protect brain cells against oxidative damage that occurs following ischemia-reperfusion injuries or the damage that results from the sudden return of blood and nutrients to brain tissue after they have been deprived of them following a stroke. While research into PQQ is still in the early stages, these early results have shown that this micronutrient may one day play an important role in the treatment of stroke victims. We hope that this blog post has helped to shed some light on pyrroloquinoline quinone, its importance in metabolic processes, and the potential applications that it may have in the future treatment of brain injuries. At Nascent Health, we offer our own line of pyrroloquinoline quinone called PureQQ. Through our proprietary methods, we have developed a PQQ product that offers the highest purity of its kind and has been certified FDA GRAS for use in food and beverages. If you would like to learn more about our line of PQQ products please visit our website today. At Nascent Health we are dedicated to providing the highest-quality micronutrient extracts on the market and we are sure that once you experience the quality of our products you will see the difference that Nascent Health brings to the table.
Hello, and welcome to the first official Nascent Health blog! Here at Nascent Health, our mission is to deliver the highest quality food and drug supplements available to the food and beverage industry. The quality of food preservatives and additives deserves just as much attention as the quality of the food itself, and in today’s blog, we are going to be listing some facts about one of our key food additives: Pyrroloquinoline Quinone (PQQ). PQQ is a micronutrient added to a wide variety of foods and has been proven beneficial in many areas of human health. PQQ occurs naturally in many leafy greens and legumes, and is found in high concentrations in breast milk. To learn more about PQQ and its benefits, continue reading below.
PQQ Has Many Benefits For Those Who Ingest
PQQ is technically a cofactor, which simply means that it helps enzymes in the body accomplish their tasks more efficiently. This, in turn, helps with the transfer of electrons in the human body which can have a host of benefits relating to the production of energy. Below, we have listed just a few of the benefits that PQQ has for individuals.
PQQ Helps in the Production of Mitochondria: Pyrroloquinoline quinone, when present in a diet, is shown to help create new mitochondria which, we all know, are the powerhouse of the cell. Compounds that help with the creation of mitochondria are linked to increased, longevity, better utilization of energy, and helps to protect from free radicals found in the body.
PQQ Improves Memory: In tests, PQQ was shown to trigger the DNA reading protein CREB (CAMP responsive element binding protein 1), which has been shown to play a pivotal role in the growth and expression of genes. As a result, PQQ has been shown to improve memory and reverse the effects of oxidative stress, which has been shown to cause heart problems, disorders of the brain, and cancer.
PQQ is a Neuroprotective: In recent studies, PQQ has been shown to have neuroprotective properties that help in the protection of memory and cognition in older people. This is interesting because PQQ is currently being studied as a way to treat Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other brain ailments that typically affect the elderly.
PQQ Helps With Fatigue, Mood, and Sleep: Pyrroloquinoline quinine has been shown to help people fall asleep and to improve the quality of sleep that people experience. In one study, it was found that people who ingested 20mg PQQ for 8 weeks who had previous fatigue or sleep-impairing disorders, saw significant improvement in both sleep duration and quality.
PQQ Helps Decrease Insulin Resistance: Because of its effects on mitochondrial biogenesis, PQQ has been shown to alleviate fat-induced insulin resistance. It has this effect because increased mitochondrial growth in the muscles is perceived by the body as being akin to exercising.
PQQ Protects the Heart: PQQ has been shown in animal models to effectively reduce the size of damaged areas in the heart that developed as a result of a heart attack. It was found that this healing effect occurred whether or not it was administered before or after the heart attack, suggesting that it could be beneficial to treat recent heart sufferers within the first few hours after the attack with PQQ to help prevent permanent heart damage.
PQQ Improves Brain Function: Some studies have found that PQQ helps stimulate the production and release of nerve growth factors which, in turn, appears to improve the memory function of humans. PQQ was also found to help with production of Schwann cells which are responsible for the production of the myelin sheath around the axons of neurons.
PQQ Decreases Inflammation: It was found that people who took 20 mg of PQQ a day saw significant decreases in the levels of C-reactive protein and IL-6, a main cytokine related to inflammation when released by the immune cells of the body.
We hope that this blog has helped to give you more information about what PQQ is and why it is an important food supplement. Our PQQ supplement, PureQQ, offers the highest purity of its kind and is the only PQQ supplement that has been FDA GRAS approved for use in food and beverages. To learn more, visit our website today.
