DUBAI, Nov 14 Russian scientists working in the food industry of the Efko company have come up with an innovative sweetener that contains no carbohydrates at all, this could be a breakthrough for people suffering from diabetes, said one of the shareholders of the Efko group of companies, Rostislav Kovalevsky.
According to WHO, the number of people suffering from diabetes in the world has quadrupled over the past 40 years. It is the only serious non-communicable disease in which the risk of premature death increases rather than decreases. According to the International Diabetes Federation, there are currently 537 million adults worldwide living with diabetes—that's one in every ten people. More than 90% of them have type 2 diabetes and about half of them do not know about it. Tuesday marks World Diabetes Day.
“Sugar, of course, has alternatives. One group is chemical alternatives (artificially synthesized sweet substances). However, the fundamental problem is that our body is not adapted to them, more and more scientific studies show their harm. The second group is plant-based alternatives, for example, stevia. They have their drawbacks – they are not very tasty and expensive. The price is due to the fact that they cannot be grown in large quantities. For example, stevia is obtained from a special plant that grows only in South America,” Kovalevsky said.
According to him, a group of scientists working with him have discovered rare types of African fruits that have sweetness, but not because of sugar as such, but because of protein – and when in contact with taste receptors, it is this form of protein that gives amazing sweetness .
Biotechnological researchers have come up with a way to create this sweet protein in the laboratory.
“This is a special mechanism that allows the microorganism to produce sweet protein. Our best samples showed that it is up to 10 thousand times sweeter than regular sugar,” the expert emphasized, adding that 1 gram of such protein replaces 10 kilograms of sugar.
World Diabetes Day is celebrated annually on November 14th and was introduced in 1991 by the International Diabetes Federation and the World Organization in response to the threat of increasing diabetes worldwide.
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