Walk any product-development team through their current pain points and you'll hear the same refrain: cut the sodium, cut the sugar, clean up the label—without losing the flavor that keeps customers coming back. That tension is exactly where the ingredient business is being fought right now, and it's exactly where Daesang planted its flag at IFT FIRST 2026.
The South Korean fermentation giant used the world's largest food science and innovation expo—held at Chicago's McCormick Place from July 13 to 15—to reintroduce a 70-year ingredient legacy to a room full of global buyers. And the pitch was pointed: not "here's our raw material," but "here's how we solve the reformulation problems keeping your R&D team up at night."
A Big Stage for a Big Bet
Hosted annually by the Institute of Food Technologists, IFT FIRST is a serious barometer of where the industry is heading. The 2026 edition drew more than 1,000 companies from 80 countries and over 15,500 industry buyers. Daesang, a participant since 2024, leaned into live product demonstrations this year—putting its umami- and sodium-reduction solutions directly on the tongues of the people who specify ingredients for a living.
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That's a meaningful shift in tactics. Sampling beats a spec sheet every time when the entire value proposition is "you won't taste the compromise."
Dsavory: Clean-Label Umami That Cuts Sodium
The headliner was Dsavory®, Daesang's next-generation fermented flavor enhancer built for clean-label, vegan, and low-sodium formulation. Because it's fermented, Dsavory® qualifies for a clean "Natural Flavor" label declaration—letting manufacturers swap out synthetic enhancers and pull down sodium while keeping a product's original flavor profile intact.
Daesang broke the lineup down by function, and each variant maps to a real category problem:
Dsavory LH — introduces deep mid-to-late flavor notes ideal for instant noodles and sauces.
Dsavory MH — delivers rich umami with roasted meat notes, making it adaptable for snacks, processed meat products, and plant-based meat alternatives.
Critically for buyers weighing risk, the entire lineup has secured FEMA GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) status—validating its safety and reliability.
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Sweevero and the Sugar-Reduction Push
With weight-management and low-sugar demand still accelerating, Daesang introduced Sweevero™, an integrated alternative-sweetener brand built on the success of its allulose in the North American market. Sweevero™ folds in stevia and customized sugar-reduction systems tailored to customer needs.
The company also showcased formulations designed to strip out the off-notes that plague alternative sweeteners—the unnatural sweetness, bitterness, and lingering aftertaste—for a cleaner, more balanced profile. Visitors tasted the difference in low-sugar and low-calorie beverages on the spot.
EMULAID and Capsulaid: The Texture and Delivery Play
Beyond flavor and sweetness, Daesang spotlighted two functional systems. EMULAID™, a plant-based emulsion stabilizer made from waxy corn starch, holds a uniform balance between oil and water to improve texture across beverages, creamers, sauces, and flavorings.
The company also unveiled Capsulaid™, engineered to encapsulate functional ingredients—flavors, colors, oils, and vitamins—into a stable powder form. It drew notable attention for maintaining low viscosity while delivering strong emulsifying performance during spray drying, resulting in better storage stability and end-product quality.
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"IFT FIRST 2026 was a powerful platform for us to reintroduce our 70-year legacy of food ingredient technology and specialized solutions to the global market," stated Hyo-hoon Lee, Head of Ingredient Marketing at Daesang. "Moving forward, we are focused on strengthening our role not merely as a raw material supplier, but as a strategic collaborative partner that develops customized formulations alongside our clients. By utilizing the U.S. market as our strategic hub, we will continuously expand the applications of our next-generation ingredients to deliver solutions perfectly optimized for evolving global food trends."
Why It Matters
For product developers, procurement directors, and foodservice executives, Daesang's IFT lineup is a useful read on where reformulation is heading—and a shortlist of tools to get there. Three practical takeaways:
Clean-label with a "Natural Flavor" declaration is now table stakes. A fermented enhancer that cuts sodium while qualifying for a clean label lets manufacturers respond to shopper scrutiny without a taste penalty—and FEMA GRAS status lowers the compliance friction of adopting it.
Sugar reduction is a flavor problem, not just a sweetener swap. The competitive edge is masking off-notes, so operators evaluating low-sugar reformulations should demand a taste test, not a spec sheet.
The "partner, not supplier" model is the direction of travel. Daesang framing itself as a co-development collaborator signals what buyers should expect—and negotiate for—from ingredient vendors: customized formulations, not commodity drums.
For anyone tracking better-for-you and plant-based product roadmaps, these are the categories—low-sodium, low-sugar, plant-based meat, functional powders—where the next round of menu and CPG innovation will land.
Are clean-label umami and sugar-reduction systems on your reformulation roadmap for the year ahead? Tell us what's working—and what isn't—in the comments.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine’s “Top 40 Under 40” for founding American Wholesale Floral. Politz is also the founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
