Kagawa University Agriculture

In the popular American magazine Newsweek, Professor Izumori of Kagawa University’s Faculty of Agriculture was featured in a profile of rare sugar. The article discusses the importance of rare sugar for health, especially when used as a replacement for high-calorie sugars in the American diet. The article focusses on the  the fact that rare sugar functions and tastes similarly to other sugars, and yet contains 1/10 of the calories, and now, thanks to Professor Izumori’s research, can be manufactured efficiently. The commercial application of rare sugar in the US food industry could hugely impact and reduce the rate of obesity and diabetes among Americans. Professor Izumori was given credit for his pioneering vision and research in this field.

What we know about allulose is due almost entirely to the tremendous efforts of Izumori. Because rare sugars like allulose aren’t found in large quantities in nature (and are costly to reproduce in the lab—just a single gram of allulose with complex chemistry costs hundreds of dollars), scientists didn’t pay much attention to them. Izumori, who turns 72 this year, worked for years on rare sugar until he made a breakthrough discovery in 1999: an enzyme that rearranges atoms in single-ring sugars and could make allulose out of fructose. It was entirely serendipitous. Izumori discovered the enzyme in a microbe that originally came from the dirt in a garden behind the campus cafeteria. “I couldn’t believe the result,” he says. The enzyme wasn’t supposed to work on fructose. “But I tried many times and confirmed.”

The Newsweek article discusses the bright future of rare sugar. American and European markets have taken notice.

Izumori now has the attention of not only the scientific community but also major food manufacturers in the U.S. and Europe. Allulose has the potential to be a commercial Godzilla: “There are many other rare sugars which are likely to be beneficial in different ways,” Fleet says, “but commercially, allulose is the major breakthrough.”

The Newsweek article can be read here.