Guilt-fee chocolate bar could be coming soon, with sugar that won’t make you fat

“A guilt-free chocolate bar, full of sugar, could someday land at a supermarket near you,” reports the Wall Street Journal:

The chocolate would look and taste normal, and contain the same amount of sugar. But an enzyme, encased in an edible substance and added to the bar, would reduce how much sugar is absorbed into the bloodstream, and even turn it into a fiber that is good for your gut.

The product is the brainchild of scientists at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. In 2018, Kraft Heinz tapped the scientists to help develop a sugar substitute that would enable the food giant to cut the sweetener from its food without losing its benefits. The scientists had a different idea—save the sugar but devise a way to make it healthier….[An] enzyme, used by plants to create stalks, is encased in spherical nanoparticles—tiny mesh-like cages made of pectin that allow the enzyme to be added to food without being activated until it reaches the intestine. Once there, a change in pH causes the cage to expand, freeing the enzyme to float through its holes and start converting sugar to fiber…

The Wyss Institute is now licensing the technology to a company to help bring its enzyme product to market, a process that entails additional testing and work to secure regulatory approval. Inverso says that the aim is for the product to be available to U.S. food manufacturers within the next two years, and that other encapsulated enzymes could follow: products that reduce lactose absorption after drinking milk, or cut gluten after eating bread.

For now the enzyme works better in solid food than in a liquid. Producing it in large quantities and at low cost is still a ways off—currently it’s 100 times more expensive than raw sugar, Inverso says.