Answers
Is there a protein that tastes like sugar?
Yes. Nature already made a few: sweet proteins found in tropical fruits that trigger the sweet receptor the way sugar does. Tomorrow took the best of them, brazzein, and rebuilt it so it does not just taste sweet, it tastes like sugar.
How can a protein taste sweet?
Your tongue reads taste through receptors. Sugar fits the sweet receptor and your brain reports sweetness. A protein folded into the right shape fits the same receptor, and the receptor cannot tell the difference. A handful of plant proteins do this on their own: brazzein, thaumatin, monellin and a few others.
If sweet proteins exist, why is sugar still everywhere?
Because the wild ones came with problems: rare fruits are not a supply chain, some lose their sweetness when heated, and their sweetness arrives late and lingers. Brazzein had the best answers to the second and third problems, which is why Tomorrow started there.
What did Tomorrow change?
The timing. TomorrowSweet™ is brazzein reimagined, the same natural amino acids rebuilt so the sweetness arrives when sugar's would and leaves when sugar's would. Version 1.9 is 90% identical to sugar in taste. Tomorrow calls it a taste protein: a protein invented to create a taste, sugar first.
What happens when you eat it?
It is digested down to amino acids like any other protein, with no glucose response, no insulin response, and no microbiome effects. About a thousand times sweeter than sugar, used in milligrams, calorie-free in use.
Can I taste it?
Yes. Lion Hydration's drink sweetened with TomorrowSweet™ launched nationally at Walmart. Brands and formulators can request a sample and get formulation support from bench to launch.
Sugar's taste, in a protein.
The taste of sugar and the profile of a simple protein were never supposed to fit in the same ingredient. TomorrowSweet™ is where they do.
Keep reading
Sources for the general facts above: the published literature summarised at Wikipedia, Brazzein and Wikipedia, Thaumatin. Statements about TomorrowSweet™ are Tomorrow's own. Published 2026-09-07.