Chief Scientific Officer Grant DuBois of Almendra Recently Featured on Close Up Radio

PRESCOTT, AZ, UNITED STATES, October 20, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- We all adore sweets, pastries, ice cream, candy, chocolate, and soft drinks. They tantalize our taste buds and dance in our mouths like bits of heaven. But too much sugar can lead to health issues including heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and obesity. With consumers becoming increasingly more health conscious, it's no surprise that sugar substitutes are in demand more than ever before. One of the most popular options are stevia sweeteners, natural zero-calorie sweeteners that can be used in baked goods, frozen desserts, confections and beverages. But the question is, when added to food and drinks, do stevia sweeteners actually taste like sugar? Many people have observed that stevia sweeteners have bitter and licorice-like off tastes as well as a lingering sweet aftertaste, all perceptions that consumers find so unpleasant that they refuse to swap stevia sweeteners for sugar. Bottom line, most of us are not willing to compromise taste. And so, is there any solution in sight to our struggles with sugar?

Grant E. DuBois, Chief Scientific Officer at Almendra, a highly reputable company that develops, manufactures and markets a range of stevia sweetener products including Steviose 100, the highest purity rebaudioside A in commercial production at 99.9%, as well as Steviarome taste modulators. Now, Almendra is announcing a breakthrough invention, the System G Taste Modulators, mixtures of magnesium, potassium, and calcium minerals that when added to stevia sweeteners, or any noncaloric sweeteners, gives them that pleasant taste of sugar we are all craving. AND the minerals in System G Taste Modulators are nutritionally important and underconsumed in the diets of most western consumers.

Celebrating ten years in business since inception, Almendra's mission and objectives are on sugar reduction and taste modulator solutions for the global food and beverage industry. Headquartered in Singapore, Almendra manufactures in Thailand with specialist sales and support teams in the Americas, Europe and Asia. The purpose and mission of the organization is not only about professional achievements but also about integrity and an unequivocal desire to enhance and improve the overall health of all people.

Dr. DuBois explains, the sweetness of stevia sweeteners derives from a multitude of steviol glycoside compounds approaching 60 in number present in the leaves of a plant known as stevia rebaudiana (Bertoni) which is indigenous to Paraguay and a part of Brazil. In earlier times, stevioside was the major steviol glycoside in this plant and pure stevioside is almost as bitter as it is sweet. Today, cultivars of this plant have been developed in which rebaudioside A is the major steviol glycoside and rebaudioside A, when pure, has negligible off taste. Rebaudioside D and rebaudioside M are steviol glycosides present at low levels in stevia leaf extracts but have been commercialized by bioconversion from rebaudioside A or by fermentation from glucose.

Dr. DuBois' career is a testament to perseverance and vision marked by a series of successful innovations. His work is backed by decades of research, ingenuity, and his desire to reduce the detrimental role of sugar that slowly wreaks havoc on our minds and bodies. Given his potential, he has been determined to bring us on a path to long-term health and wellness.

Concurrent with serving as Chief Scientific Officer at Almendra beginning in 2012, in 2013-2014, Dr. DuBois served as VP Research at Sweet Defeat LLC, where work led to Sweet Defeat, a sweetness-blocking weight loss product. And in 1992-2011, he was Director of Ingredient & Product Sciences at The Coca-Cola Company, where work led to multiple innovations, including the first sugar-free frozen carbonated beverages, the first sweetener receptor positive allosteric modulators SucralGEM and SucroGEM, and development of the stevia sweetener rebaudioside A. Previously, he worked as Director of Chemical Products Discovery for The NutraSweet Company, where his work contributed to the discovery and development of neotame, a synthetic noncaloric sweetener, Research Group Leader at Syva Company and Research Group Leader at Dynapol Company. He obtained his Bachelor's Degree in Chemistry and Mathematics from Capital University in 1967, a Doctor of Philosophy in Organic Chemistry from the University at Buffalo in 1972 and did Postdoctoral Research at Stanford University.

System G Taste Modulators substantially reduce the lingering sweet aftertaste of stevia sweeteners like rebaudioside A as well as rebaudioside M and all other noncaloric sweeteners. And, in addition, they provide a very pleasant sugar-like mouthfeel to their formulations in foods and beverages. System G Taste Modulators are described in a March 2020 US patent as well as in the paper “Replication of the Taste of Sugar by Formulation of Noncaloric Sweeteners with Mineral Salt Taste Modulator Compositions”, G. DuBois, R. San Miguel, R. Hastings, P. Chutasmit and A. Trelokedsakul, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 2023, 71, 24, 9469–9480. And Almendra is doing a commercial launch of System G Taste Modulators this Fall and is very excited to announce that commercial samples will now be available.

In launching System GTaste Modulators, Dr DuBois continues his legacy of innovation and remains poised in continuing to make significant strides in enabling reduction of carbohydrate sweeteners by innovation in ingredient chemistry.

In his upcoming two-part interview, Dr. DuBois is going to explain his career journey, debunk myths we may have about sugar, HFCS and noncaloric sweeteners, and discuss the launching of his extraordinary System G Taste Modulators which may revolutionize the food and beverage industry. Don't miss it!

Close Up Eadio recently featured Grant DuBois in a two-part interview with Jim Masters on Tuesday October 14th at 1pm EST and with Doug Llewelyn on Tuesday October 21st at 1pm EST

Listen to the Podcast
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/part-1-close-up-radio-spotlights-chief-scientific-officer/id1785721253?i=1000732101876
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-close-up-radio-242020413/episode/part-1-close-up-radio-spotlights-chief-scientific-officer-grant-dubois-of-almendra-300748173
https://open.spotify.com/episode/4AXLTdfhV2Q4V3ak9XG4dx

For more information, visit www.almendra.com

Lou Ceparano
Close Up Television & Radio
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