Latest / Talk Commerce / Revolutionizing Sweets: The Potential of Sweet Proteins with Ali Wing
Transcript
- Brent Peterson (00:02.602) Welcome to this episode of Talk Commerce. Today I have Allie Wing. Allie, go ahead, introduce yourself, tell us your day-to-day role and one of your passions in life. ali wing (00:12.109) Thanks for having me here, Brett. I'm excited to be here. My name's Allie and I'm the CEO of OOBLY and we make sweet proteins that are revolutionizing sweets and how we actually sweeten our foods. And that's what I'm excited to tell you about today. My other passion, other than revolutionizing sweets would probably be national parks. I grew up in Montana with a dad who was an aficionado and every chance I get, I escaped to a national park somewhere and that's probably a short list of passions. Brent Peterson (00:41.75) That's awesome. So we have, we've already discovered we have Minneapolis as a connection and, and Hawaii. And my, I was born in Montana. My dad lives in Helena. My sister's here in Hawaii with me from Bozeman. So I get, all right. Well, my sister owns Chalet Market. It's in Belgrade anyways. Yeah, maybe she would. Yeah. She makes, they make sausages and, you know, meat sticks. They sell it in Yellowstone Park. ali wing (00:55.469) I'm from Bozeman. Bozeman's getting your hawk. ali wing (01:03.314) Oh, fun. How cool. Brent Peterson (01:10.962) Okay, we won't, we won't, we'll stop there. And I'll be in Montana at the end of the month. So, in Helena. Anyway, yes, it's beautiful. All right, so Ali, before we get started, you did volunteer to, I'm gonna just tell you a joke. And all you have to do is say, should this joke be free or do you think at some point we should charge for it? So here we go. My wife has forbidden me from making more breakfast puns. She says If I do. ali wing (01:18.645) beautiful place. Brent Peterson (01:41.11) I'm toast. My son keeps egging me on. He's such a ham. ali wing (01:48.397) That was good. I would probably pay. Brent Peterson (01:50.578) Yeah, I kind of screwed up the delivery, but I appreciate it. Thank you. ali wing (01:55.177) First half got me laughing anyway, and I don't know, nowadays I could use, I could be more convinced to pay for, for jokes and entertaining and fun than I could half the news we get. Brent Peterson (02:02.702) For a joke, right? Brent Peterson (02:07.038) Yeah, exactly. All right. Well, so let's talk about I mean, I mean, I'm interested in sweet proteins. I know that, you know, chocolate is a protein, right? Is that a sweet protein? So tell us a little bit about your business and how you started. ali wing (02:22.541) So sweet proteins evolved from some plants and berries that grew along the equator. We think probably evolved with human civilization, but we didn't know about them until a lot of the breakthroughs in technology in synthetic biology allowed us to understand plant DNA better than we understand it today better than we did 10 years ago or ever before. And what we found out is these plants or berries evolved to... create one little protein that only works on large primates, so us and monkeys and gorillas and apes, and to trick the same thing that our brain tastes sugar with, to trick it to think it's sugar, but it's not, it's a protein. And so as you eat it, the impact and the importance of all of that is that it doesn't affect your blood glucose levels, your glycemic index, or your gut microbiome, meaning it's a really important way to think about sugar reduction and obesity and diabetes. And that's what sweet proteins are. What they are today and what we're doing is how do we actually make those a part of great products? So chocolate, no, isn't a sweet protein, but chocolate's full of sugar typically. And in our chocolates, we took out 80 to 90% of that sugar and sweetened it with a sweet protein so that chocolate has a far lower load on your metabolic system, but you still love it. And oh, by the way, it has about a third of your daily fiber all courtesy of rehabilitating the food to still taste like the chocolate you've always loved, but with a better pathway for your body. Brent Peterson (03:53.354) I want to ask about chocolate because I know there's a lot of cocoa plants here in Kona, and I'm assuming the sugar is added later, like the beans are processed and then they add a bunch of sugar and make it super sweet, is that right? ali wing (04:03.892) It is. ali wing (04:09.449) It is, yep. The cacao is not sugar. And milk chocolate, of course, inherently with the milk has sugar, right? Dark chocolate, in all cases, chocolate bars you're eating has added sugar. And a typical, just to give you an range, a typical dark chocolate bar will have 10 grams of sugar and a typical milk chocolate bar will have 14 to 18 per serving, right? So just to give you context, in a sweet protein powered bar, so where we've taken out the sugar and sweetened it a different way, a dark chocolate for us will have one gram of added sugar, so 90% less than a milk chocolate, which still carries some of the sugar in the dairy, will have about four grams per serving, and so about 75% less than a typical chocolate bar. Brent Peterson (05:00.706) So what products do you see that benefit the most from this besides chocolate? ali wing (05:07.797) Well, the good and the bad for both of us is that sugar is in 75% of all foods we eat today. So there's really not a product category where sugar isn't part of what we would say the formula or the recipe. And when you kind of map that against what's going on with our metabolic syndromes, 40% obesity rates, a third diabetic, 20% of our kids now, which is really not just a US problem, it's a global one. because our metabolic system is reacting to things we didn't used to have. Sugar is not the only culprit, but it's a chief culprit. The opportunity is in every food category. There isn't a food category that we couldn't become a primary rehabilitation tool. The footnote there is that some categories are different than others. Like when we have sweet teas and when we take any beverage, it could be a soda, it could be a tea, it could be anything, lemonade. When we take out sugar and put in sweet protein, the rest is just water because the only role of sugar in those drinks is sweetness. In a chocolate bar or let's say a baked good, that's a really different equation because the other role that sugar's playing when you take it out is bulking. And so one of the things we have to do is replace the bulking. And that's different than our sweet proteins, but it means that as we replace sugar in different product categories, there's different levels of complexity and different nuance, but the opportunity for Replacing sugar or rehabilitating foods is equal opportunity in all food categories. Brent Peterson (06:41.142) So if we're talking about the way it works in our body, how does the sweet, what is it, not to get technical, but how does it help us, is it really just fooling our mind, thinking about the sweetness? ali wing (06:57.973) So we all experience sugar primates, large primates, the same way. And we have what's called these T1 and R2 taste receptors, which is kind of the things we taste with at the front of our tongue. Whenever we eat anything that's sweet, that's where we experience it. That's the thing that sends a message to our brain and says, yay, I just got sugar, right? The way sugars do it, and every sugar that you know before you ever heard of sweet protein is what's called a small molecule type sugar. Sugar or sugar alternative, doesn't matter. Plant-based, artificial, they're all small molecules. They actually, when you eat them, they kind of bombard that taste bud. And then as they move through your digestion, they're really hitting your insulin or hitting your gut microbiome. What a protein does to trick it or fake it is they actually come in and momentarily bind for just a second. They bind with that same T1 and R2 taste receptor. That tells your brain, hey, you just got the sugar. But like any other protein, the moment I swallow it, it unfolds and it deactivates. So the thing that triggered... the taste doesn't trigger insulin or any of your glycemic index. Kinda cool, huh? Brent Peterson (08:05.022) Yeah, that's really cool. So besides the, I mean, obvious benefits, do you have some good, and I know that you said there's not a good category or not a broad category, but is there specific foods that you target in the beginning to work with your product? ali wing (08:23.381) We do, we do. What I will tell you is that the biggest, if we look at it from a problem point of view, the biggest problem with daily added sugar, and it's where we put sugar into things, is in our beverages. And that's a global number. Like if you looked across the world and said, how do we eat and how are we getting different types of nutrients as we eat throughout the day? 40% of all our sugars comes in the form of beverages. And so when we look at like trying to be a solution for tackling problems like healthcare problems, we start with beverages because it's the 800 pound gorilla of the problem. What I like about that, and it's not really the why, but the bonus is the only role of sugar in a beverage is sweetness, the rest is just water. So since sweet proteins are about 1000 to 4000 times sweeter on a weight-weight basis, a typical soda, let's pretend we had an orange soda, we won't brand it, we'll just say a 16-ounce orange soda. Typical one would have about 16 to 18 cubes of sugar in it, right? If it was a full sugar one, we would replace that with water and about 0.075 milligrams of a sweet protein. So not only did it just change what was happening with a lot of sugar being consumed, it happens to also dramatically reduce calories because you just take out a lot of what's creating the calories too. It's not really why we do what we do. We're really focused on the metabolic effect, but the upside is, is because it's so potent. And in drinks, that's a really beautiful combination because all you're doing with the rest of what you take out is putting in water. And we should be drinking more water anyway. Brent Peterson (10:03.506) I'm an athlete and we use all kinds of gels and things like that when we long distance racing or whatever that is. Is there a benefit, and my coach has told me many times, if I feel like I'm crashing a lot of times it's from a lack of protein, it may not be from too much sugar, but there is a sugar spike and there's a thing in the industry about too much sugar in your gel is going to give you a sugar crash and people are going to starches. Brent Peterson (10:33.238) sugars and carbs that an athlete would need and some of the things that you're talking about in terms of just sodas and drinks where people are just consuming them. Is it a better type of protein that you need when you're working out or is there any difference there? ali wing (10:48.365) Well first, couple things, proteins are proteins, right? And they're the building blocks of our body. So if I take you back to biology 101, you'd find out that 50% of the weight of your body is protein. So our bodies are just really good at handling proteins. And no matter the type of protein, proteins are proteins in terms of how your body handles it. So true for athletes, true for all people, we need protein. It's a really important part of how our body builds what it does and maintains healthiness, right? A couple of things are different when it comes to athletics. You're on the endurance side. And let me give you the comparison. We have a guy named Eric Armstead, who's a linebacker for the 49ers. He's one of our ambassadors. And he's the example opposite of an endurance athlete, super big, super strong, but a big guy strong athlete. Those guys can be super fit, super muscly and still be managing diabetes. They can still have that as an effect within their system. They are looking for ways to satisfy their sweet tooth like any of us, but, excuse me, they actually need to stay away from sugar or sugar alternatives. Endurance athletes, although there is spikes with all types of sugar, there's an argument that some form of sugar within the total diet is actually good. And one of the things you'll learn from us is we're not really anti-sugar. We're just anti the amount of sugar the average person is eating and trying to reduce that amount and replace it with something that helps their body be healthier. Excuse me. Brent Peterson (12:21.418) Some of the types of sugars that we are seeing in our diet are worse than others. Is there a correlation with the high-fro course corn syrup compared to regular cane sugar, to beet sugar? Are all those just ranked as the same type of sweeteners? ali wing (12:40.961) You know, most of the plant-based non-sugar alcohol, so the canes, the monk fruit, the beets, that are grown, even some of the stevias, they're a plant-based really important crop that we actually need in our food system and our bodies for a variety of reasons. We all evolved to have a very strong pre-sort of... predisposition to crave sugar and overeat it because that was part of our human species development of survival is we had to seek out roots, right? Seek out those other energy sources beyond protein. And that's why our addictive craving is so strong. So they're really important and there's a lot of good ones that come out of the plant. The problem is our bodies weren't designed for them to be. every checkout counter in yogurt for breakfast in addition to sauces on our dressing in addition. So our modern food system is so good at being responsive to what we like. And listen, we weren't really designed to have moderation or modulation of our sugar taste. We were designed to seek it out and crave it, right? So that we would find it in our diet. That just kind of runs head in sort of, it's like a, it's like a crash into the modern world, right? And so what this can do is give us a better balance from that. That's really, I think, the primary goal. There are a whole other category of what I call sugar alternatives, which now have a lot of, there's a lot of debate, there's a lot of different sponsored medical research, but there's a lot that suggests the high intensity, whether they're plant-based or not, or alcohols are actually well known to take existing health conditions and make them worse or be adding to some very serious health issues. Whether that's diabetes and obesity, which I would argue is pretty fundamentally a problem anyway, you know, there's a lot of research now that says if you're predisposed already to strokes, they will increase it. So your average person eating a small amount of any of them, they wouldn't be food safe, regulated, if that wasn't fine. They are fine. The problem is our volumes of all of them. And many of those that are small molecules that never came out of nature that are new to our body. ali wing (14:50.737) are creating long-term implications that we just didn't really know. And honestly, a lot of the healthcare community is just figuring it out now. Brent Peterson (14:59.27) I have a cousin who is drinking sort of like 20 cans of Diet Coke a day and eventually he also had some problems. I'm assuming that there's as many problems with chemical sugars as there are with natural sugar in the industry. ali wing (15:13.993) Yeah, there is and it's, it is I mean, all sugars are small molecules and all small molecules in abundance well above what our body was intended to regulate is a problem. That's where weight, diabetes and everything else is coming from, right? That's one of the chief culprits, not the only one, but a really critical one. And then you add into that, that you're talking about things that didn't exist before that are now you mostly hear about those as having the impact in the gut. microbiome, right? We're adding things. My partner, our CTO and our co founder always likes to say he's a fermentation guy and he's a biotechnologist. And he always likes to tell everybody, we're all walking talking fermenters, we all have a fermenter in our belly. And when we've created these new things, some of them are actually plant based, but there's two still new combinations, many of them are artificial into our system, they might not. do things in the upper part of our digestion, but over time, our living microbiome is taking new or foreign substances and changing what it's doing, and that is having an effect. And if it's a small molecule, unlike proteins that are large molecules, small molecules can get into your tissue. And that's where we know there's a lot of intersection with cancers and diseases today is what's getting absorbed in our tissues. It's not a straight line for any one of them. You can't say all are fundamentally bad or good if you had a single serving. I'm not a big believer to say somebody can't, we should create a scare tactic of you can't have a particular packet in your coffee one day. The challenge is really volume over time. And then it goes up a lot when there are things we've created that... weren't native to our flora which is a live organism that's adjusting to how our body is handling its imbalances and if we're putting a lot more into a system than we implant we have imbalances and that's why you see what's the most popular part of any cool grocery start today in drinks it's prebiotic and probiotic doesn't everybody love to talk about that so those are trying to manage the symptoms of this problem I like to say what we're doing with sweet proteins is preventative ali wing (17:22.513) is to get us back to having less of the problem to have to symptom manage. Brent Peterson (17:28.418) I've seen in different parts of the world, they use different things for sweeteners. So in Hawaii, they have a ube ice cream. Is it the same type of thing where you maybe have sweet potatoes or some other types of vegetables that are sweetening it rather than just plain sugar? ali wing (17:47.797) Yeah, I mean, to date in our diet or our food system anywhere in the world, the only thing that is sweet has been a carbohydrate or sugar light carbohydrate, meaning it's a small molecule. So even fruits as we both know, right? Eating fruits, it would be hard to overeat the volume of whole fruits that you peel and eat. But if you started just drinking juices, that can be a primary source of health issues related to things like diabetes and obesity For the same issue because it's concentrated sugars, right? You don't run into the likelihood of that with things that are full fruits. It can happen, but you'd have to eat a lot It's harder to eat a lot of those things It's easier to eat the processed ones because they're concentrated forms, right? So most of the world has some fruits and vegetables that provide sweets in different ways, but they're still all small Molecules and they're still all carbohydrates and they're still all part of the equation of what we're eating too much of in our Brent Peterson (18:45.71) Tell us a little bit, I mean I think I shared I was a big tea drinker and I know that you have a tea right, tell us a little bit about some of the products that you create and how they differ from some of the other ones that are on the market. ali wing (18:59.201) So our first product ever, so a year ago, we just had our first protein. We're working on about six of these protein. There's about 12 known in the world. And a year ago, we got our first one regulated, right? And we've been really conservative with going through everything safety because how are we gonna go bend the global health curve if we introduce something that we're not certain is really safe? So we feel really bullish about it, we're excited. But we also knew our first product, we wanted to be drinks. And so our sense, our focus is very much as a global issue. We looked at Where's the most interesting thing happening for young people? 20 something today, because they're the big adopters of new trends and changes. And we decided teas was the big opportunity because boba tea in food chains, you can imagine that we're probably working with some of those. But we also saw this growing demand for kind of healthy energy. Healthy energy, you see it in all sorts of things and it's showing up in a lot of healthy energy teas. So ours are a healthy energy take on a fruit forward sweet tea. And I would tell you that they are about 75% less sugar for an equivalent sweet tea. And an example would be a typical tea, let's say really truly in the South sweet tea, which we're not as sweet as yet because we're only using one protein, would be probably on average 35 to 55 grams of sugar per serving. The slightly more, let's say, coastally thinking sweet tea would be more like 25, 22 to 25 grams per serving. Our teas are seven grams and that's because we have about one gram of sweetness. I can tell you about why we put just a little bit into every one that's a sugar, not a protein. And then the rest is fruit, right? Because we have fruit for it. So we have a mango, yuzu, green tea. We have a peach sweet tea that's a black tea. We have a lemon. We have an Arnie P for our Arnold Palmer. And really what we're trying to do is just give you the people that want a sort of better healthy tea that's a sweetened tea, not. having made the decision to just not have sweets, a better way to do that, and it's about a 75% sugar reduction. What I'm really excited about is that if, as of today, so a year ago, that was our first protein, we now have four proteins regulated with safety. So we're working on products that have combinations of our protein, and why is that important? We kind of hold the standard of how sweet can we make something. If you tell me your favorite... ali wing (21:19.837) secret sweet. Let's say you're a tea lover and you have a brand you love and this is this sweet. My job is to actually not change what you like a sweet but reformulate it and see how can I keep the flavor you like and how much lower can I make it sweet. And what we found is that when we work with multiple proteins we can actually go to higher sweets so maybe we can get to that southern sweet. I'm not sure yet but we're working on that. And how much less added sugar or fruit or whatever do I need to put in it? And what I'm finding is that we can get about 10 to 20% sweeter and we can drop the sugar added by another 10 to 20%. And that's really exciting for us, right? We start thinking we can solve more people's sweet tooth because not everybody wants to adjust around these health demands. And we're working really hard to make it so that we can meet the consumer where they are. Give them what they want because we're biologically designed to love sugar. I don't wanna make people feel bad. The reality is, is our bodies are struggling. and I do want to address the health system. Brent Peterson (22:19.838) Yeah, isn't it funny how like if you're in Georgia, it's gonna be sweet tea on this counter and if you're in Minnesota It's gonna be no sweet tea, right? So so you have teas and chocolates. Those are the two main products that you're doing now ali wing (22:28.766) Exactly. ali wing (22:35.745) Yeah, we did. So the reason we did that, we're really rolling out beverages. So you'll see us, I can tell you, you'll probably be the first to know, I think. We are about to announce our new flavors for spring teas. And we'll also, we only had one green tea and there's been a popular demand. So we'll now have a multi-pack for green tea. And we had a lot of demand from parents to give them a caffeine-free option. And so we're adding lemonades to it. So there will be black teas. green teas, which will be extended, and lemonades all coming this spring. And so our goal was really to be a beverages company. That said, we are a company that's trying to educate the world and the market on sweets and how to understand. One of the biggest challenges in this market is that consumers, if you survey consumers today, they've been trying to reduce sugar for 20 years. And if you look at our last 20 years, how are we doing? Poorly, right? So... Our numbers are kind of going the opposite way as what we say we're trying to do. And some of that's because food gets sweeter and sweeter, but some of that's also because we've kind of lost the wayfinding of how to understand the labels. Which, what thing can I trust? What thing is really good for me? What thing isn't good for me? So one of the really important things we wanted to do is be able to educate people. And there is some beauty in talking about sweets with a confectionary that's different than any other type of product. So we thought, why not just do chocolates? We can do them too. We can explain to people Everybody gets I'm talking about a sweet if I'm handing them a chocolate. Teas, you can have unsweetened teas. In chocolate, there's really no version. At least nobody's eating it. They're only baking with it. So we wanted to do a chocolate where we could kind of create the conversation. And we're doing a lot of that with trials and free trials and media and conversations exactly like this because sometimes as simple as the idea of sweet protein sounds, it almost sounds too good to be true. proteins really do more than build muscle? And the answer is yes. Nobody's ever heard that before. And so we want to build examples, trust, and a pathway to follow that really what you should be looking for is more of your sweets to come from a protein. Brent Peterson (24:42.654) And where can we find your products? Is it only on your website right now, or are you getting through distribution? ali wing (24:48.733) Yeah, it's an exciting moment for you to ask me that because today we are on our website, but you'll also find us on a lot of digital marketplaces, including Amazon and any of you that have a Prime membership, you can get it shipped with your Prime membership. So we stock with Amazon and we're growing very fast. All of our products are also available there and several other digital marketplaces. And tomorrow I actually leave for our 2024 Expo West and it's our launch of our wholesale line. And we will be... rolling our products and they're expanding products out through retailers. So I would expect this time next year, there's lots of stores you should be able to get them from. Today there's about 100 that sell them mostly in California because that's where we're from. But we haven't had wholesale sales. They've just bought them from us and sold them because there's enthusiasm. We will actually be selling them and we're excited to announce where they'll be. Brent Peterson (25:40.546) That's fantastic. So, Ali, as I close out the podcast, I give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug. What would you like to plug today? ali wing (25:50.285) I'd love to say if you're interested about how to reduce sugar and you want to know more about sweet proteins Come sign up and follow us and just be in the know get educated read the blogs Find out when we're announcing things and whether you want our sweet teas or chocolates is secondary What I really want you to do is find out that there are there's a different way to satisfy your sweet tooth And it can be much healthier for you And there's actually nobody that I've met in the world that doesn't need to really think about the role of sugar in their diet and its compounding issues with inflammation and everything else. Brent Peterson (26:27.574) That's awesome and I'll make sure I put your contact information on the website and the show notes so they can go in and find you easily. Allie Wing, it's been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for being here today. ali wing (26:36.717) Thank you. ali wing (26:41.965) Thank you for having me. I really enjoyed the conversation and the opportunity to tell people about sweet proteins. It's a fun thing.