FoodTech start-up Better Juice, Ltd., in partnership with the GEA Group, one of the largest suppliers of food processing technology, has become successful in completing a series of experimental trials for reducing simple sugars in natural berry and other fruit juices. To show its achievement, Better Juice hosted several prominent berry fruit juice manufacturers from Europe, the USA, Australia, and Brazil to give their personal brands a sugar reduction makeover using their groundbreaking sugar reduction technology.
The trials were conducted at the pilot innovation unit established last year in GEA’s innovation centre in Ahaus, Germany. Accommodating the GEA Better Juice Sugar Converter Skid, the state-of-the-art site is equipped with continuous flow columns containing Better Juice’s sugar-reducing beads. During the trials, the team was able to reduce the simple sugar content by 30% and 50% across a range of fruit juices, including strawberry, cherry, and blueberry, while preserving their characteristic flavours and textures.
Better Juice was founded in 2018 as one of the first start-ups to be nurtured by The Kitchen FoodTech Hub. Better Juice brings new hope for juice manufacturers and consumers by reversing the perception of natural fruit juices as overly sugary products and turning juices into better-for-you beverages. The company offers a truly better juice product by reducing the sugars while maintaining their natural profile of vitamins, minerals, and fibres.
According to Eran Blachinsky, co-founder and CEO of Better Juice, fruit juices contain 10% or more sugar, with berry and cherry juices comprised of 10%–20% sucrose and the remainder fructose and glucose, and “our technology reduces loads of all three of these simple sugars. This will allow more people to enjoy berry-based juices.”
Forming Better Juice’s proprietary sugar-reduction beads are non-GMO microorganisms that naturally convert the juice’s composition of sucrose, glucose, and fructose into prebiotic oligosaccharides and other non-digestible fibres while retaining their natural complement of vital nutrients.
The feedback was most promising, with several companies expressing a strong interest in continuing to work with Better Juice to bring these products to market, and it is also currently in advanced discussions with several major US-based fruit juice companies to install its technology in their juice production systems. The projection is that the sugar-reduced berry fruit juices will reach the shelves early next year.
The treatment process proved successful for both clear NFC (not from concentrate) juices and dense concentrates as well as pulp-retained juices. A significant number of juice manufacturers’ worldwide use concentrates to reduce shipping costs by evaporating the water and adding it back in at the destination during bottling.
Berry and cherry fruit juices are naturally abundant in pulp, which is why many juice companies strive to retain these fibre-rich fruit solids in their products. Better Juice’s technology has been designed to handle pulp and ensure it remains in the juice, eliminating the need for filtering. This not only helps to preserve the nutritional benefits of the fruit but also delivers a satisfying texture that consumers love.