How Corn-Based Allulose is Helping ‘Move the Pile’ for Indiana’s Corn Farmers

You might not know that some of the corn that’s being planting this spring could wind up becoming a sweetener that’s used in your ice cream, cookies and sodas called Allulose.

During the AgriNovus Indiana Quadrant event held on Wednesday, Hoosier Ag Today spoke with Abigail Storms, Senior Vice President of Global Sweeteners and Fibers with Tate & Lyle, as she shared the benefits of Allulose, a sugar substitute that’s comes from corn.

“Allulose has 10 percent of the calories of sugar, it has no impact on blood glucose levels, and it’s non-cariogenic, so it doesn’t affect the pH in your mouth that would cause cavities,” according to Storms. “It’s a perfect solution in terms of when you want to replace sugar, but you don’t want to lose the functionality that sugar brings. You’re creating that much healthier solution as a result.”

Storms says that corn-based Allulose not only tastes more like sugar, but it also has the same texture when it hits your taste buds.

“That’s because the Allulose is like sugar. It’s building back what we call ‘mouth-feel’, so that kind of syrupy feel that you have in your mouth when you drink a full sugar soda compared with how a diet soda experience is,” says Storms.

Courtney Kingery, CEO of the Indiana Corn Marketing Council and Indiana Soybean Alliance, says that Allulose is another way that corn is showing its value to the world—and providing more value back to Indiana’s corn producers.

“It’s another way in which a new product, a new market, and a new innovation, is continuing to ‘move the pile’ and find new opportunities and new areas that corn grown right here in Indiana and in the Midwest can be used to help meet consumer trends,” says Kingery.

Tate & Lyle, which is based in London, has two corn wet mills in Indiana, which are both in Lafayette.

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