Investors, Scientists Smack Their Lips as NutraSweet Unveils Fat Substitute
NutraSweet Co., which makes the most widely used no-calorie sweetener, unveiled the first all-natural substitute for fat on Wednesday. Visions of guilt-free ice cream and other foods inspired medical experts and investors alike.
The fat substitute, called Simplesse, provides the same rich taste and texture as fat, but is made of ground-up protein from fresh egg whites or milk, the company said.
Simplesse does not require regulatory approval, and products using it could reach the market in 12 to 18 months, Robert Shapiro, NutraSweet’s chairman and chief executive, told a crowded news conference.
Simplesse could help reduce diseases stemming from fat-heavy diets that cause 100,000 premature deaths annually in the United States, said Vernon Young of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“My colleagues and I are really very excited,” said Young, a professor of nutritional biochemistry who was recently appointed to the scientific advisory board of Skokie, Ill.-based NutraSweet.
Simplesse could help people lose weight and cut their cholesterol intake by providing a way to do so without sacrificing taste, Young said. “Food,” he said, “is meant to be enjoyed.”
Stock in St. Louis-based Monsanto Co., NutraSweet’s parent company, jumped $4.75 a share to $83.50 in consolidated New York Stock Exchange trading.
The fat substitute even received a cautiously favorable reaction from the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington-based watchdog organization.
The center has been lobbying against Procter & Gamble Co.’s proposed fat substitute, olestra, which was announced in May and is being scrutinized by the Food and Drug Administration.
“(Simplesse) certainly offers interesting possibilities, although it doesn’t mean automatic health benefits to consumers,” said Michael Jacobson, the center’s executive director.
The biggest drawback of Simplesse is that it cannot be used in frying or most kinds of baking because it congeals like egg whites when heated. Heating it is harmless, but unappetizing.
Simplesse would allow calorie reductions in food servings ranging from 28% for yogurt to 54% for premium ice cream, 55% for cream cheese, 70% for refrigerated salad dressing and mayonnaise and 78% for butter, the company said.
Simplesse is “based on an elegantly simple and totally unexpected discovery,” Shapiro said.
Researchers found that disintegrating protein into mist-like particles could “fool the tongue” by giving the smooth, creamy sensation of fat, he said, declining to describe exactly the process used.
There is no direct competition between Simplesse and Procter & Gamble’s olestra because P&G;’s petition to the FDA is only for use of olestra in oils or shortening for home cooking, food service and packaged snack foods. Simplesse cannot be used for any of those things.
Procter & Gamble’s stock fell 50 cents a share to $84.25.
Olestra, a generic word for sucrose polyester, is a synthesis of sugar and edible oils that tastes like fat but is not recognized by the body as food and passes through undigested.
The Center for the Science in the Public Interest has asked the FDA to reject olestra, contending that P&G; used “blatant manipulation of the data” in its petition and should have conducted safety studies on mice as well as rats.
Major Sales forecast
The key discovery that led to Simplesse was made in 1979 by Norman S. Singer and his associates at John Labatt Ltd., a London, Ontario-based maker of beer and food.
In 1984, NutraSweet obtained a license on the technology from Labatt and hired Singer, who did further work to commercialize it. Both Labatt and NutraSweet have applied for patents in countries around the world.
Some analysts estimated sales of Simplesse would be likely to top the $800 million a year of NutraSweet, the sugar substitute that is used in soft drinks and other products.
Shapiro declined to estimate the potential sales of Simplesse, but the company cited studies saying that total U.S. retail sales of the products in which it could be used total about $15 billion a year.
Even though Simplesse is a normal food, it may have trouble getting established because of “the normal paranoia associated with any new food product,” said Theodore Semegran, a Shearson Lehman Bros. analyst.
But Peter Chinn, an analyst at Scudder Stevens & Clark, said Simplesse could help sustain Monsanto’s growth as it loses sales because of the recent or coming expiration of patents on other profitable products such as NutraSweet and the pesticides Lasso and Roundup.
Other U.S. companies working on fat substitutes include Pepsico Inc.’s Frito-Lay division, CPC International Inc., Lever Bros., a U.S.-based subsidiary of the British-Dutch firm Unilever, and General Foods Corp., a subsidiary of Philip Morris Cos.
CUTTING THE FAT
NutraSweet said it hopes to market Simplesse, a fat substitute, by mid-1989. The stock of its parent, Monsanto, jumped $4.75 after the news.
Calorie Reduction Food Using Simplesse Yogurt 28% Ice Cream 54% Cream cheese 55% Salad dressing 70% Mayonnaise 70% Butter 78%
