SBIR Phase I: New Crystallization Modifiers for Low Calorie Fats in Food Products

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project is to facilitate the commercialization of new low calorie fat technology to solve some of the largest obesity and related health issues facing the United States while providing a patentable new additive platform to sell or license to the $600 billion food industry. With high caloric density foods being the primary cause for the obesity epidemic, the facilitation of low calorie fat substitutes will have a powerful impact on the health of a large portion of society, reducing health care costs and providing a positive economic impact. Locally, the development of this technology will result in potential growth of high technology jobs in South Carolina. The objectives of this Phase I research project are to address the growing obesity epidemic in the US through the development of new molecular architectures for crystallization modifiers a low calorie fat substitutes which have been shown to reduce caloric intake by 90%. Previous attempts to commercialize fat substitute technology, such as Olestra from P&G, have encountered issues with undesirable anal leakage of the fat substitute out of the body which have dramatically reduced their market acceptance. This issue has been addressed by Tetramer, but due to the innovative molecular structures used, a suite of new commercial crystallization modifiers must be developed which can modify the crystallization rates to best match the performance of current natural fat products. Therefore, the key technical objectives are to determine the fundamental mechanism of how Tetramer?s new crystallization modifiers can solve both the nucleation and crystal growth modes governing the crystallization rates during manufacture of food compositions containing low calorie fat replacers. The structure/activity relationships developed will allow a new class of crystallization modifiers to be commercialized which will allow the fat reduction technology to be more rapidly applied to the large markets within the food industry. These new structures could also be applied to non-food applications such as clarifiers for polymer products.