AURORA, Colo., March 03, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — MycoTechnology, Inc., a leader in food ingredient innovation through fermentation, announces its breakthrough Honey Truffle Sweet Protein achieved self-affirmed Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) status and is now commercially available at scale in the United States for use in food and beverages. This rigorous scientific milestone is substantiated by a comprehensive safety assessment and uncontested independent expert panel evaluation. MycoTechnology has also submitted a GRAS dossier to the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) for their formal review and public transparency.
“This landmark is the result of a multi-year discovery journey and signals a meaningful step forward in sugar reduction,” says Jordi Ferre, MycoTechnology Chief Executive Officer. “By combining our scientific expertise with a steadfast commitment to improve the food supply, our team unlocked a transformative new food and beverage ingredient that redefines sugar reduction. We look forward to mainstreaming the use of Honey Truffle Sweet Protein as a significant advancement in sugar reduction solutions.”
Reducing sugar intake is a public health priority (3 in 4 American consumers are looking to limit or avoid added sugar), however taste remains the top food and beverage purchase driver.1 Honey Truffle Sweet Protein offers manufacturers a unique sweetening approach that helps enable creation of good tasting and better-for-you foods and beverages that align with both consumer expectations and public health objectives.
Honey Truffle Sweet Protein is a naturally derived ingredient that captures the sweetness of the Hungarian honey truffle. MycoTechnology successfully isolated the protein responsible for this sweetness and produces Honey Truffle Sweet Protein through fermentation. This innovation enables scalable, sustainable production that is cost-effective and less resource-intensive than other sweetening solutions.
MycoTechnology’s brand name for Honey Truffle Sweet Protein is Zukora™, a name inspired by its Hungarian origin. Key benefits include:
- Naturally derived: meeting demand for sweetening ingredients derived from nature
- Clean sweetness: no off-notes, bitterness or unpleasant aftertastes
- Competitive cost-in-use: up to 2,500 times sweeter than sucrose (depending on application) and cost-in-use competitive with sugar, with future economies of scale projecting it to become competitive against other high intensity sweeteners
- Fully digestible: breaks down into common amino acids in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract2
- Gut microbiome friendly based on studies conducted to date
In the past year, MycoTechnology has successfully scaled production of Zukora™ Honey Truffle Sweet Protein from pilot plant to manufacturing batches, enabling rapid customer adoption in the U.S. Coupled with newly achieved self-affirmed GRAS status, this advancement in scalability marks a watershed moment for MycoTechnology and opens new possibilities for sugar reduction in the marketplace. Zukora™ Honey Truffle Sweet Protein can be used as a single sweetener or in blends with other sweetening options to achieve an overall sweetness profile closest to sugar. Target application areas include:
- Functional beverages (sports nutrition powders, protein shakes, powdered supplements)
- Bars (nutrition/protein/cereal)
- Confectionery (chocolate, chewing gum)
To explore the origin story and learn how Zukora™ Honey Truffle Sweet Protein can help achieve clean sweetness and support sustainable sugar reduction, visit www.HoneyTruffleSweetProtein.com and view the ingredient journey video.
- IFIC Food & Health Study, 2025
- McFarland et al. (2024). Discovery, expression, and in silico safety evaluation of honey truffle sweetener, a sweet protein derived from Mattirolomyces terfezioides and produced by heterologous expression in Komagataella phaffii. J Agric Food Chem 72(35):19470-19479. DOI:10.1021/acs.jafc.4c04368.
About MycoTechnology, Inc.
Since 2013, MycoTechnology has harnessed the power of nature to create breakthrough solutions for better tasting and more sustainable food and beverages. Combining the power of fungi with fermentation technology, MycoTechnology creates transformative taste modulation and sugar-reduction ingredients including ClearIQ™ Natural Flavor, ClearHT™ Natural Flavor and Zukora™ Honey Truffle Sweet Protein, a revolutionary sweetening ingredient derived from the honey truffle that delivers a uniquely clean taste profile with minimal off-notes. MycoTechnology sells globally to flavor houses, CPG companies, beverage-makers and co-manufacturers. MycoTechnology has raised $220M and operates in a state-of-the-art manufacturing and R&D facility outside Denver, Colorado. For more information visit mycoiq.com
Contact
Kim Joyce
FoodMinds
+1 212 421 8321
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A video accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/60351751-2ced-4236-8999-051e9972cd5a
A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/9ed5d819-3e8b-4924-8624-a9e94a85e615