Groundbreaking ingredients triumph at the inaugural food, beverage edition of Ingredient Idol

As SupplySide Food & Beverage Journal Content Director Audarshia Townsend stepped onstage in the Fi North America Theater at SupplySide West, the packed crowd murmured with excitement. Her infectious energy instantly warned them to expect the unexpected.

“Hello and welcome, everybody,” she said. “This is the first ever Ingredient Idol for food and beverage, so give it up!”

Ingredient Idol is a lively competition that celebrates innovative novel ingredients. It’s been a hit for years in the supplement space, so SupplySide decided to give food and beverage some love, too.

The finalists ranged from functional ingredients to alternative sweeteners in the two categories, with each contestant being assessed not only by a panel of expert judges — Sam Kressler from Stir Innovation, Nadia Kemal from Topi Ventures and Daniel Scharff from Startup CPG — but also by their peers for the people’s choice award.

Food Winner

Beverage Winners

Paul Peterson, global alternative proteins leader at ICL Group, accepted both awards in the food category for RBS, a clean label binding solution that can replace chemically modified additives like methyl cellulose.

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“When formulating plant-based products, if all the ingredients are plant based and clean, but the binder is not, then the overall label is not clean,” Peterson said. “Rubisco is a well-known, abundant and sustainably farmed protein derived from lemna leaf and has excellent binding and gelling properties.”

For the beverage category, two brands had a chance to share the spotlight. First, the judges awarded Titan Sweet the big win. This revolutionary sweetener developed by foodguys uses a protein foundation and offers a clean sweetness without unpleasant aftertastes or gastric upset — and it costs 75% less per serving than sugar.

Slade Crooks, founder and president of foodguys, spoke about the hurdles of developing this ingredient. “There have been two main challenges: one on the product development side, which involves taking a little known, underutilized, FDA-approved sweetener that fundamentally doesn’t taste all that great and blending it with other natural, GRAS [generally recognized as safe] ingredients to create a desirable outcome,” he explained. “The second challenge is everyone wants to know what’s in that proprietary blend and getting them to take that leap of faith without sharing that information [is difficult].”

Related:Expert panel explores functional food formulation at SupplySide West

Finally, the people’s choice award for beverage earned the loudest cheers of the bunch. That could be because PLT Health Solutions brought along the most fans of the brand — or it could be the remarkable properties of this ingredient.

Derived from mango leaves, Zynamite S offers a slew of functional benefits, including boosts to cognitive and athletic performance. It’s not exactly a caffeine replacement, as it doesn’t bind to adenosine receptors, but it works well alongside that ever-present performance enhancer.

“Consumers want nonstimulant mental and physical energy,” Jeremy Appleton, director of medical and scientific affairs for PLT Health Solutions, said. “People can take caffeine, but you can only take so much before you start getting increased heart rate and blood pressure. So, one of the things we’ve found with Zynamite S across a number of studies is that [you don’t see] those adverse effects that you would with high levels of caffeine, but you do have a nonstim increase in mental energy, so people can perform activities that would be improved by caffeine without taking caffeine.”

And that wraps up the food and beverage edition of Ingredient Idol. Keep an eye out for exciting new ingredients in 2025 because next year’s competition should be even fiercer.

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