The food system today wrestles with a stubborn trade‑off: healthier, protein‑rich products often sacrifice the taste that keeps consumers coming back. That gap widens as consumers demand foods that are both good for them and delicious.
To bridge that elusive gap, Colorado-based ingredient innovation company MycoTechnology, Inc. is tapping into the fungal kingdom to craft new ingredients. Founded in 2013, the company has spent more than a decade turning deep science into a commercially proven fermentation platform, harnessing nature for a future where “good for you” and “tastes good” no longer compete.
Under CEO Jordi Ferre, MycoTechnology achieved a pivotal milestone: Zukora™ Honey Truffle Sweet Protein earned Self-Affirmed Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) status and is now commercially available at scale in the United States. The new ingredient captures the sweetness of the Hungarian honey truffle, promising a clean, high-intensity sweetness that can replace added sugar across a range of products.
We sat down with Jordi to discuss the breakthrough, the market implications, and what lies ahead for the company.
This interview has been edited for clarity and concision.
Closing the Taste Gap: The Assumption MycoTechnology Is Built to Challenge
Forward Fooding: What is a core assumption held by the mainstream food and agriculture industry that MycoTechnology is built to challenge, and what impact do you want to generate at the food system level?
Jordi Ferre: A core assumption in the mainstream food and agriculture industry is that products that are better for you, high in protein and fiber, lower in fat and calories, functional, and natural, cannot also deliver exceptional taste. At MycoTechnology, we are working to close the gap between “good for you” and “tastes good” through natural, fungi-based ingredients that enable solutions such as zero-calorie sweetness and flavor modulation to reduce off-notes.
With the science proven, the next step was to scale MycoTechnology’s ingredients to food and beverage manufacturers, the mandate handed to Jordi Ferre when he was appointed CEO in January 2025.
MycoTechnology CEO, Jordi Ferre
Forward Fooding: Can you elaborate on the strategic rationale behind appointing a new CEO in December 2024?
Jordi Ferre: I view my appointment as a natural step in MycoTechnology’s evolution into its next phase of growth and global commercialization. With more than 30 years of experience across food, value-added ingredients, and agri-tech, I have had the opportunity to help build and scale ingredient platforms, from establishing the global stevia market at PureCircle to driving growth across natural ingredient portfolios. That background aligns closely with what we are building at MycoTechnology.
We are at an inflection point as a company. With a strong foundation in taste innovation and growing demand for better-tasting, healthier solutions, our focus is now on scaling the business, strengthening our commercial capabilities, deepening strategic partnerships, and bringing our technologies to global markets. I am excited to lead this next chapter at MycoTechnology while helping build a world-class team, a strong company culture, and a mission-driven organization with long-term impact.
That mandate to scale found its proof point just one year into Jordi’s tenure, when Zukora™ crossed the regulatory threshold that turns a promising ingredient into a commercially available one.
Forward Fooding: How does the recent Self-Affirmed GRAS status for Zukora™ impact your commercialization timeline in the U.S.?
Jordi Ferre: Achieving self-affirmed GRAS status in December 2025 enables immediate commercial readiness in the U.S., allowing MycoTechnology to work with innovative, fast-moving CPG companies on product development and market applications while the FDA GRAS notification, submitted in February 2026, remains under review and is expected to be cleared by year-end. This milestone accelerates ingredient adoption by giving manufacturers the flexibility to evaluate and launch products.
In parallel, MycoTechnology is advancing international regulatory submissions across key markets in 2026 to support a broader global commercialization strategy.
Zukora™: Redefining Sweetness Without Compromise
With a clear runway to market, the real test for Zukora™ is how it stacks up against the sweeteners already on the market.
Forward Fooding: What is your go-to-market strategy for positioning Zukora™ alongside existing high-intensity sweeteners?
Jordi Ferre: Zukora™ is a breakthrough sweet protein and represents the most significant sweetener innovation since Stevia Reb M more than a decade ago and the discovery of brazzein in 1994. It performs well on its own and in blends with other natural high-intensity sweeteners, as well as with sugar. At approximately 2,000 times sweeter than sugar, Zukora™ delivers a clean sweetness profile in product applications. Sensory work to date shows that it can reduce off-notes, improve temporal sweetness, and deliver a more sugar-like experience. This makes Zukora™ an ideal ingredient for optimizing natural sweetener systems and enabling low- and no-calorie formulations that align with consumer demand.
Jordi points out that Zukora™ is especially well suited for protein-rich formulations, where bitterness, astringency, and lingering off-notes can limit consumer satisfaction and repeat purchases. By improving sweetness quality, Zukora™ enables more balanced and approachable taste profiles in applications such as protein powders and protein bars, helping brands deliver high-protein nutrition without compromising taste. Used at very low inclusion levels and with zero calorie impact, Zukora™ also complements the clean-label positioning and shelf appeal of those health-forward products.
Beyond formulation, the ambition behind Zukora™ is squarely public-health-facing.
Forward Fooding: What specific public health outcomes are you aiming to influence with Zukora’s sugar-reduction capabilities?
Jordi Ferre: Zukora™ is designed to help reduce added sugar consumption by enabling better-tasting reduced-sugar and no-added-sugar products. By improving the sensory experience, we aim to support broader consumer acceptance of these products and contribute to efforts addressing nutritional challenges such as excess sugar intake, metabolic health concerns, and overall dietary quality.
Based on studies conducted to date, Zukora™ is gut microbiome-friendly, fully digestible, and does not cause glucose or insulin spikes in healthy populations.
Scaling Adoption: Partnerships and Commercial Traction
When it comes to measuring adoption success, MycoTechnology doesn’t look at financial metrics.
Forward Fooding: Beyond revenue, which key performance indicators do you monitor to gauge ingredient adoption success?
Jordi Ferre: We evaluate adoption success through a broad set of indicators, including the number of active customer projects, speed to commercialization, and repeat usage across product lines. As an emerging ingredient, adoption timelines vary: larger food and beverage companies often require longer development cycles, while smaller, more agile brands can move quickly toward launch. We also work closely with customers in innovative categories that are seeking better solutions to improve market traction.
Turning those indicators into real adoption comes down to how the company structures its relationships with the manufacturers actually putting Zukora™ into products.
Forward Fooding: How do you structure partnerships with global key accounts to accelerate Zukora’s market penetration?
Jordi Ferre: We take a collaborative, science-based approach with global key accounts, working closely on ingredient research, formulation development, sensory optimization, and commercialization planning to move efficiently from concept to launch. These partnerships often include joint development projects, dedicated technical support, and aligned roadmaps for successful scale-up.
Across all customers, not only global key accounts, we prioritize hands-on collaboration to optimize formulations and processing conditions so our ingredients perform at their best in each application. This service-oriented approach helps accelerate adoption, deliver strong formulations, and build customer trust and loyalty.
The Road Ahead: Lessons, Milestones and What’s Next
In a sector littered with alternative-protein and novel-ingredient startups that never made it past pilot scale, Jordi points to three things that have kept MycoTechnology on track. The first is talent: the company has built a cross-functional team of experienced professionals with deep expertise in the food ingredients industry, and, as he puts it, “Over the past 12 months I have made sure that the best industry experts join our organization.”
The second is focus. Their team stays critically focused on delivering their mission of bringing new sweetener technologies to market and gaining adoption across the food and beverage ecosystem, so consumers get new choices with better benefits.
The third is resources: strong investors who believe in the team, the mission, and the company’s future growth.
With that foundation in place, the next 24 months are about proving Zukora™ works well beyond the categories where it has already landed.
Forward Fooding: What milestones do you target for expanding Zukora’s applications beyond beverages and bars over the next 24 months?
Jordi Ferre: We have already demonstrated application success in confectionery, including chocolate and gum categories where effective low-calorie sweetening tools remain limited. At the same time, we continue to advance application work that optimizes Zukora™ across beverage and dairy categories, with our Research & Development team pursuing an ambitious innovation program to strengthen and expand the Zukora™ ingredient application platform.
Reflecting on the milestone that put Zukora™ on U.S. shelves earlier this year, Jordi frames the milestone as a starting point rather than a finish line: “This landmark is the result of a multi-year discovery journey and signals a meaningful step forward in sugar reduction. By combining our scientific expertise with a steadfast commitment to improve the food supply, our team unlocked a transformative new food and beverage ingredient that redefines sugar reduction. We look forward to mainstreaming the use of Honey Truffle Sweet Protein as a significant advancement in sugar reduction solutions.”
Forward Fooding: Let’s finish off with a bang: imagine it’s 10 years from now and your company has fully achieved its original vision. Describe the one headline you would be most proud to read about the impact your company has generated.
Jordi Ferre: Consumers Love the Taste and Health Benefits of Food & Beverages with Zukora™ Honey Truffle Sweet Protein.
That headline traces back to the future Jordi and his team set out to build from day one: a world where nature’s most powerful organism has quietly transformed the global food system from the inside out, and where good food also tastes good.
Visit mycoiq.com to learn more about Zukora™ Honey Truffle Sweet Protein.
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