Natural Sweetener Innovator and Chief Scientific Officer Grant DuBois of Almendra Recently Featured on Close Up Radio

PRESCOTT, AZ, UNITED STATES, May 14, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Sweetener science just got a lot more interesting. Grant DuBois, Chief Scientific Officer at Almendra and a leader in sweetener research, is changing how the world thinks about taste, health, and the future of food ingredients. With a career that began in the high-stakes world of pharmaceutical chemistry and evolved into food ingredient innovation, DuBois is now responsible for some of the most promising advances in the search for better, cleaner sweetness.

DuBois’ path was not typical. After completing his education at Stanford University in organic chemistry, he was set to join one of the pharmaceutical giants like Merck or Pfizer. Instead, he opted to stay in California, joining a Palo Alto startup called Dynapol. There, he found himself working not on medicines, but on a new challenge: food dyes, antioxidants, and, most notably, non-caloric sweeteners, designed to be safe by their inability to be absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract. This decision kicked off a decades-long career focused on making foods and beverages not just tastier, but better for consumers.

“What people don’t always realize,” DuBois explains, “is that the methods used in sweetener discovery are very similar to those in drug discovery. The science is very similar.” As the understanding of the mechanism of human taste evolved, his early work laid the foundation for innovations that would follow.

Rewriting the Recipe for Sweetness

The new millennium brought a leap forward in taste science. By 2002, enabled by the human genome project, researchers had identified the human sweetener receptor, facilitating not only the rapid discovery of novel sweeteners but also the discovery of taste modulators.

DuBois’ expertise found its most visible expression during his tenure at The Coca-Cola Company, where he spent two decades. At Coke, he initiated the discovery of the first positive allosteric modulators (aka PAMs or enhancers) of the sweetener receptor in a collaboration with biotech startup Senomyx. SucroGEMÒ, a PAM discovered in this program, was shown to enable a 50% reduction in sugar content of beverages with no change in taste. At Coke, he also initiated the development of stevia-based sweeteners, helping shape the natural ingredient strategy for some of the world’s most recognized beverages. “Coke wanted natural, non-caloric sweeteners that could replace synthetics.” However, “finding a natural non-caloric sweetener with good taste quality, stability, and safety was no small task,” DuBois recalls.

The Stevia Evolution

Among the known natural sweeteners, stevia offered high promise but came with challenges. The stevia sweetener chosen by Coke for development, rebaudioside A, had an undesirable lingering aftertaste as well as a delayed onset of sweetness. DuBois and the team at Coca-Cola pioneered the commercial development of rebaudioside A, enabling the U.S. market to launch all-natural reduced-calorie beverages like Simply juices and Fairlife high-protein milk.

But DuBois was not content with “good enough.” After retiring from Coke, he accepted a position with Almendra, a Thailand-based company, ready to tackle stevia’s persistent aftertaste and cost issues. Drawing inspiration from MIT research in the Ribbeck laboratory on drug bioavailability, DuBois discovered that the temporal aspects of taste perception are shaped by how sweetener molecules interact with a layer of mucus, really a mucus hydrogel, which covers the tongue. Sugar molecules move quickly through this mucus layer, activating taste bud receptors, and then quickly diffuse away from the receptors. Non-caloric sweeteners like rebaudioside A, however, get hung up in the mucus layer due to nonspecific binding to hydrophobic sites in the mucus causing them to reach the sweetener receptors more slowly. And then, non-caloric sweeteners diffuse away from their receptors more slowly than sugar as they again engage in nonspecific binding in the mucus hydrogel. This slowed diffusion enables a return of non-caloric sweeteners back to their receptors, thereby causing iterative activation, perceived as lingering sweet aftertaste.

In response, DuBois developed a blend of mineral salts (magnesium, calcium, potassium), now known as System GÔ, which causes shrinkage of the mucus hydrogel covering the tongue. And when non-caloric sweeteners are formulated with System GÔ, they are now able to rapidly access sweetener receptors and diffuse away from them more quickly such that sweetness onset is rapid and is perceived with markedly reduced lingering sweet aftertaste. In addition, System GÔ, when formulated with non-caloric sweeteners provides the mouthfeel of sugar which DuBois speculates is due to activation of the calcium sensing receptor which is expressed by a subset of taste bud cells. Thus, it is now possible with System GÔ technology to formulate all-natural zero-sugar foods and beverages which are remarkably similar to sugar-sweetened products. It has been reported for the US that 92, 50 and 42% of Americans consume less than the RDAs of potassium, magnesium and calcium, respectively, and so System GÔ also addresses a nutritional deficit.

Setting Industry Standards

System GÔ and Beyond: Almendra’s System GÔ, DuBois’ signature taste modulator, is now available to food and beverage manufacturers looking for that elusive sugar-like profile in calorie-free form. It’s not just stevia that benefits; System GÔ improves the sensory qualities of all non-caloric sweeteners and even increases the mouthfeel of sugar-sweetened products.

DuBois also established clear scientific metrics for evaluating sweeteners: Taste Quality, Safety, Solubility, Stability and Cost. At the outset of Almendra’s stevia sweetener development program, the metrics of Safety, Solubility and Stability had already been demonstrated. Now, with Almendra’s System GÔ, the metric of Taste Quality has been addressed and Almendra is developing cost reduction technology which will make Almendra the low Cost manufacturer of stevia sweeteners. DuBois’ widely respected publications in the field have become required reading for both established brands and upstarts seeking to enter the world of sweetness.

Looking Ahead

The future tastes sweet and smarter thanks to Grant DuBois and Almendra. Through advanced chemistry, agricultural ingenuity, and a commitment to science, DuBois has created a path forward for food and beverage companies everywhere looking to serve health-conscious consumers without sacrificing taste or affordability.

As trends shift toward transparency and quality, DuBois’ work ensures that consumers can expect more from their sweeteners: authentic taste, better nutrition, and a lighter environmental footprint.

About Almendra

Almendra is a global leader in natural sweetener innovation, specializing in high-purity stevia extracts and proprietary taste modulation technology. Almendra combines advanced agricultural science with a deep understanding of taste chemistry to deliver plant-based sweeteners that closely match the taste and functionality of sugar, while maintaining a commitment to affordability, safety, and sustainability.

Close Up Radio recently featured Grant DuBois, Chief Scientific Officer at Almendra, in an interview with Jim Masters on Tuesday May 12th at 2pm Eastern

Listen to the Podcast
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/close-up-radio-spotlights-natural-sweetener-innovator/id1785721253?i=1000767579901
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-close-up-radio-242020413/episode/close-up-radio-spotlights-natural-sweetener-innovator-and-chief-scientific-officer-grant-dubois-of-almendra-333516831
https://open.spotify.com/episode/60RAUnrC3c4hFDdv5F5pP4

For more information about Grant DuBois, please visit https://almendra.com/

Lou Ceparano
Close Up Television & Radio
+1 631-850-3314
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