Answers
How do you make a zero-sugar soda that tastes like the real thing?
A full-sugar soda hits sweet in the first second and is gone by the time you swallow. Zero-sugar sodas miss on both ends, and everything else in the can is there to cover for it. Get the timing right and the rest of the recipe gets simpler.
What does a soda actually need from its sweetener?
Three things: sweetness that arrives with the carbonation bite instead of after it, sweetness that clears before the next sip, and no note of its own to fight the acid and the aromatics. Sugar does all three. Most sweeteners manage one.
Why do the usual blends fall short?
Each high-intensity sweetener builds and fades more slowly than sugar, so the sweetness feels late and lingers, and each brings a side note: many people report bitterness or licorice from stevia, a fruity or metallic edge from monk fruit, and a lingering sweetness from sucralose. Blends are chosen so the notes partly cancel, at the cost of complexity and a taste that is still not sugar's.
What changes with a protein that tastes like sugar?
The timing comes back. TomorrowSweet™ is brazzein, the sweet protein from the oubli fruit, reimagined so its sweetness arrives up front and does not linger; version 1.9 is 90% identical to sugar in taste. There is no bitterness to mask, so the blend and the masking agents can come out. In a plain sparkling base the effect is striking: the water reads as fully sweet within seconds of the first sip.
Does it survive carbonation, acid and shelf life?
TomorrowSweet™ is heat and pH stable across common processes and works across the acidity of most drinks. It is in market in a hydration drink, Lion Hydration's, sold nationally at Walmart. Sparkling and juice-based drinks are inside its working range; a sample and your base settle the rest.
What about body?
The grams of sugar that carried body are gone in any zero-sugar soda, and no high-intensity sweetener puts them back. Formulators rebuild it with the usual tools; once the sweetness timing is right most people stop noticing. Tomorrow's team helps from bench to launch.
What does it do in the body?
It is a protein, digested down to amino acids, with no glucose response, no insulin response, and no microbiome effects. Used in milligrams, so calorie-free in use.
Real is a timing you can taste in the first sip.
Sweetness that arrives with the bite and clears with the swallow is what makes a soda taste like itself. TomorrowSweet™ is brazzein reimagined to do exactly that. Request a sample and try it in your base.
Keep reading
Sources for the general facts above: the published literature summarised at Wikipedia, Sugar substitute. Statements about TomorrowSweet™ are Tomorrow's own. Published 2026-09-07.