A YORK life science business is step closer to offering the food and drink industry a healthy alternative to sugar following successful taste studies into its latest product.

AIM-listed OptiBiotix Health, which develops dietary compounds to tackle obesity, high cholesterol and diabetes, has announced the completion of the latest stage in its development of SweetBiotix.

The development programme, which has just reported successful results from human taste studies, has been designed to develop sweet natural healthy fibres, called SweetBiotix, which are not digested in the human gut, and are therefore calorie free.

The study was carried out by The Flavour and Sensory Science Centre at the University of Reading, which tested six customised “oligosaccharides” developed from high intensity sweeteners which were compared to sucrose.

The results of the independent study have provided Optibiotix Health, based at York Science Park, with proof of product concept for a natural, low calorie, SweetBiotix.

The company has described its new products as an “an innovative concept”, which has the “potential to address public health concerns over the impact of sugar on obesity, with the prospect of replacing ‘unhealthy’ sugars in existing products with low calorie, healthy non-digestible fibres, trademarked as SweetBiotix”.

Stephen O’Hara, chief executive of OptiBiotix, said: “We are really pleased with the results of this study which opens up opportunities for the development of a range of natural sweet prebiotic fibres which can be used to replace sugar in food and beverages.

“These may be classified as dietary fibres, which from an industry and consumer perspective, creates the prospect of substituting high calorie sugars with sweet healthy fibres.

“With growing public and political concerns over traditional sugars and artificial sweeteners OptiBiotix is leading research in an area of growing industry interest.”

Optibiotix reported that given the global sweetener market, currently dominated by sugar, is forecast to reach $112 billion by 2022, the company is filing additional patents to add a further layer of protection to its existing intellectual property portfolio to protect its inventions which will allow the company to continue to fully exploit the commercial potential of its range of products.