MycoTechnology, Inc., supplier of food ingredient innovation through fermentation, announced its Honey Truffle Sweet Protein achieved self-affirmed Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) status and is now commercially available at scale in the U.S. for use in food and beverages. This rigorous scientific milestone is substantiated by a comprehensive safety assessment and uncontested independent expert panel evaluation, the company notes. 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 CEO. “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 (three in four 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 aims to offer 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 strives to capture the sweetness of the Hungarian honey truffle. MycoTechnology successfully isolated the protein responsible for this sweetness and produces Honey Truffle Sweet Protein through fermentation, it says. This innovation enables scalable, sustainable production that is cost-effective and less resource-intensive than other sweetening solutions, the company adds.

MycoTechnology’s brand name for Honey Truffle Sweet Protein is Zukora, a name inspired by its Hungarian origin. According to the company, 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 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, the company says. 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, bars, and confectionery.

To explore the origin story and learn how Zukora Honey Truffle Sweet Protein can help achieve clean sweetness and support sustainable sugar reduction, visit HoneyTruffleSweetProtein.com and view the ingredient journey video.

1. IFIC Food & Health Study, 2025
2. 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.

Related: MycoTechnology, Palsgaard aim for clean chocolate tastes