Brazzein, the Sweet Protein That Won’t Spike Your Blood Sugar

Written by Partha Nandi, MD, FACP

Brazzein is a protein roughly 2,000 times sweeter than sugar, and in a new human study it cut ice cream’s blood sugar spike about in half. Originally pulled from a West African fruit, this sweet protein delivers intense sweetness without the sugar load that sends your glucose climbing after dessert. That’s exactly why it’s catching the eye of researchers who study blood sugar and metabolic health.

In the trial, people ate the same vanilla ice cream sweetened three ways: with ordinary sugar, with brazzein, and with brazzein plus a fiber called inulin, while a continuous monitor tracked their glucose. Both brazzein versions produced roughly half the post-meal rise of the sugar version, and the effect was strongest in people who already had type 2 diabetes.

That’s promising. It’s also a small, short study with a wrinkle in how it was built. Below is what the researchers actually tested, why a sweet protein can slip past your blood sugar in the first place, and what you can realistically do with any of it today.

Dr. Nandi’s Bottom Line

A sweet protein called brazzein replaced the sugar in ice cream and roughly halved the post-meal blood sugar spike in a small human trial. It’s early science, and the sugar-free recipes also added fiber and sugar alcohols, so brazzein doesn’t get all the credit. As a protein, it sweetens without feeding your blood sugar, and regulators already treat it as safe. The proven move today is still cutting added sugar and pairing treats with fiber and protein.

Inside the Brazzein Ice Cream Trial

The study came out of the Federal Research Center of Nutrition, Biotechnology and Food Safety in Moscow, and it was published in the journal Clinical Nutrition ESPEN. Researchers recruited 101 adults who all had metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease, or MASLD, the newer name for fatty liver tied to metabolic problems. Many also had obesity or type 2 diabetes.

Each person ate a standard 100-gram serving of vanilla ice cream on three separate days. One day it was sweetened with ordinary sugar. One day with brazzein. One day with brazzein plus the fiber inulin. Nobody knew which was which, and the order was randomized, which is the kind of careful design that makes a result more trustworthy. A continuous glucose monitor tracked each person’s blood sugar for about two and a half hours after eating.

The numbers were striking. Compared with the sugar version, both brazzein versions cut the post-meal glucose rise by roughly half. The drop was even larger in participants who already had type 2 diabetes, and no serious side effects turned up.

This is real human data, not a petri dish or a mouse study, which makes it more relevant to you than a lot of viral health claims. Still, it’s worth being clear about the size and scope: about a hundred people, all with fatty liver, each measured for a single afternoon after a single serving. That makes this an early, promising result, not a settled fact about everyone’s dessert.

Why Brazzein Doesn’t Spike Blood Sugar

Table sugar is a carbohydrate. When you eat it, your body breaks it down into glucose, that glucose moves into your bloodstream, and your pancreas sends out insulin to usher it into your cells. That rise and fall is the blood sugar spike everyone talks about. If you want the full picture of how glucose and insulin trade off, I’ve written about how blood sugar and insulin work together.

Brazzein plays by different rules, because it isn’t a sugar at all. It’s a small protein, just 54 amino acids, originally found in the fruit of a West African plant and now mostly made by fermentation, the same basic process behind yogurt and bread. Your body digests it the way it handles any protein, into amino acids, so it never floods your blood with glucose. And because brazzein is somewhere between 500 and 2,000 times sweeter than sugar by weight, a tiny pinch does the sweetening that grams of sugar used to.

It’s also tough. Brazzein holds its sweetness through heat and across a wide range of acidity, which is why it can survive being cooked into foods and frozen into ice cream when many other natural sweeteners fall apart.

One more piece explains the blood sugar result. In this study, the sugar-free recipes didn’t just swap in brazzein. They also used sugar alcohols and fibers in place of most of the sucrose, and fiber like inulin is known to blunt the glucose rise from a meal on its own. So the gentle blood sugar response came from the whole redesigned recipe, not from brazzein working alone.

Brazzein Isn’t a Green Light Yet

Viral posts love a clean story: magic protein, no more sugar spike. The real study is more careful, and the careful version is more useful.

The biggest wrinkle is that the brazzein ice creams weren’t identical to the sugar one except for the sweetener. They also contained sugar alcohols like maltitol and erythritol, plus fibers like inulin and oligofructose, all standing in for the sucrose. Each of those ingredients can lower a glucose response by itself. The researchers said as much: they can’t credit the smaller blood sugar spike to brazzein alone.

A few other limits are worth naming. Everyone in the study had fatty liver, and many had obesity or diabetes, so we don’t yet know how the same ice cream behaves in a leaner, healthier group. Each person was measured once, for a single afternoon, after a single scoop. Nothing here tells us what happens to liver fat, weight, or long-term blood sugar if you eat brazzein desserts for months or years.

None of this makes the finding worthless. Earlier work in mice pointed the same direction, and the biology of a sweet protein is sound. It just means brazzein is promising early science, not a green light to treat sugar-free ice cream as a free food.

Less Added Sugar Still Beats Any Substitute

Brazzein isn’t sitting in your grocer’s freezer yet, but it’s closer than you might think. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration has reviewed a fermented version of brazzein and raised no objection to its use in food, and it’s already turning up in a handful of products like sweetened teas and chocolates. Expect it in more places over the next few years.

For your blood sugar, the appeal is straightforward. A sweetener that tastes like sugar but doesn’t feed your glucose could make desserts friendlier for people managing diabetes, prediabetes, or fatty liver, without asking them to give up sweets entirely. That flexibility is the whole point, because the diets people actually stick to are the ones that don’t feel like punishment.

Two things are still worth keeping in mind. A brazzein scoop still carries fat and calories, and sugar-free desserts are easy to overeat precisely because they feel guilt-free. And the move with the strongest evidence behind it is simply having less added sugar overall. The American Heart Association suggests capping added sugar at roughly 6 teaspoons a day for women and 9 for men, and most of us sail well past that. Softening a sweet treat with fiber or protein is another habit that reliably helps.

So treat brazzein as a promising new tool, not a cure for a sweet tooth. The fundamentals, less added sugar, more fiber, and real meals, still do the heavy lifting.

My Personal RX on Outsmarting Your Blood Sugar Spikes

Brazzein is exciting, but you don’t have to wait for a new sweetener to steady your blood sugar. The biggest wins come from the everyday habits around what, when, and how you eat, and most of them cost nothing. Your goal isn’t to fear sugar. It’s to keep your glucose on a gentler, steadier curve so your energy, mood, and long-term health all benefit.

These are the tips I come back to with patients who want to tame post-meal spikes without giving up the foods they love. Start with two or three that feel doable, and build from there.

• Lead with fiber, protein, and fat. Eating some vegetables, protein, or healthy fat before your carbs slows how fast sugar hits your bloodstream. The same principle showed up in that ice cream study, where added fiber helped flatten the glucose curve.
• Don’t drink your sugar. Sugary drinks raise blood sugar faster than almost anything, because there’s no fiber or fat to slow them down. Water, unsweetened tea, or coffee are your steadiest everyday choices.
• Support your metabolism from the inside. Even with good habits, blood sugar, cholesterol, and cravings can drift as we age. I often point patients who want extra cardiometabolic support toward MetaBurn, which is formulated to help keep blood sugar and cravings in a healthier range alongside a balanced diet.
• Take a walk after meals. A 10 to 15 minute walk after eating helps your muscles pull glucose out of your blood, which noticeably lowers the post-meal spike. It’s one of the simplest tools you have.
• Build a plan you’ll actually follow. Lasting blood sugar control is really a collection of daily habits. My guide, Dr. Partha Nandi’s Protocol for Optimizing Your Health and Wellbeing, walks through how to turn these pieces into a routine that fits your life instead of fighting it.
• Choose whole over refined. Whole fruits, beans, oats, and intact grains come packaged with fiber that softens their effect on blood sugar. The more processed a carb, the faster it tends to spike you.
• Protect your sleep. A single short night can make your body more insulin resistant the next day, nudging blood sugar higher. Guarding seven to nine hours is a blood sugar strategy, not just a rest strategy.
• Give yourself a metabolic reset when you need one. If you’re working to drop some weight and steady your metabolism, my Weight Loss Bundle pairs targeted support for metabolism, cravings, and steady energy to make those first changes easier to stick with.
• Manage stress on purpose. Stress hormones like cortisol push blood sugar up even when you haven’t eaten. A few minutes of slow breathing, a walk outside, or time with people you love all help bring it back down.
• Keep sweets a treat, not a habit. Whether it’s sugar or a sweet protein like brazzein, dessert works best as an occasional pleasure. Enjoy it, savor it, and let the rest of your plate do the daily work of keeping you well.

When to See a Doctor

Swapping sweeteners is a fine way to cut back on sugar, but it’s no substitute for knowing your own numbers. High blood sugar often causes no symptoms at all until it’s been elevated for a while, so the signs below are worth taking to your doctor rather than managing on your own.

Check in with a healthcare provider if you notice:

• Unusual thirst or a dry mouth that won’t quit
• Needing to urinate far more often than usual, especially overnight
• Blurry vision that comes and goes
• Unexplained weight loss, or constant hunger even after eating
• Fatigue that rest doesn’t fix
• Cuts, sores, or infections that heal slowly
• Tingling or numbness in your hands or feet

None of these prove anything on their own, but together they’re your body’s cue to get your blood sugar checked. If you already live with diabetes or fatty liver, keep up with the monitoring and visits your doctor has set, whatever changes you make to your diet.

References:

1. Isakov, V. A., et al. (2026). Effect of sucrose-free brazzein-sweetened ice cream on continuously monitored glycemic response in patients with metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease: A randomized controlled double-blind crossover trial. Clinical Nutrition ESPEN, 75, 105066. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clnesp.2026.105066
2. Isakov, V., Goncharov, A., Pilipenko, V., Sasunova, A., Kochetkova, A., & Bessonov, V. (2026). Acceptability of brazzein-sweetened ice cream as a sugar-reduction strategy in metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease: A double-blind randomized crossover sensory study. Dairy, 7(3), 44. https://doi.org/10.3390/dairy7030044
3. U.S. National Library of Medicine. (2026). Efficacy and tolerability of specialized ice cream products based on brazzein compared to standard ice cream (NCT06724913). ClinicalTrials.gov. https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT06724913
4. Kim, H., Kang, J., Hong, S., Jo, S., Noh, H., Kang, B. H., Park, S., Seo, Y.-J., Kong, K.-H., & Hong, S. (2020). 3M-Brazzein as a natural sugar substitute attenuates obesity, metabolic disorder, and inflammation. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 68(7), 2183-2192. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jafc.0c00317
5. Lightowler, H., Thondre, S., Holz, A., & Theis, S. (2018). Replacement of glycaemic carbohydrates by inulin-type fructans from chicory (oligofructose, inulin) reduces the postprandial blood glucose and insulin response to foods: Report of two double-blind, randomized, controlled trials. European Journal of Nutrition, 57(3), 1259-1268. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00394-017-1409-z
6. Nield, D. (2026, October 10). A protein 2,000 times sweeter than sugar halved ice cream’s blood sugar response. ScienceAlert. https://www.sciencealert.com/a-protein-2000-times-sweeter-than-sugar-halved-ice-creams-blood-sugar-response

Frequently Asked Questions

What is brazzein?

Brazzein is a naturally sweet protein first found in the fruit of a West African plant called oubli. It’s small, about 54 amino acids, and it tastes intensely sweet, somewhere between 500 and 2,000 times sweeter than table sugar by weight. Today it’s mostly produced through fermentation rather than harvested from fruit.

Does brazzein raise blood sugar?

On its own, brazzein isn’t a carbohydrate, so it doesn’t deliver glucose the way sugar does, and it isn’t expected to drive the usual post-meal spike. In the ice cream study, the brazzein versions produced about half the blood sugar rise of the sugar version, though the recipes also used fiber and sugar alcohols that help on their own. Brazzein looks like a low-impact sweetener, but the human research is still early.

Is brazzein safe to eat?

Regulators have taken a favorable view so far. In the United States, the FDA reviewed a fermented version of brazzein and raised no objection to its use as a food ingredient, and the ice cream trial reported no serious side effects. As with any new ingredient, longer studies will tell us more, but a protein your body digests like any other protein has a reassuring starting point.

Can people with diabetes eat brazzein-sweetened foods?

The early signs are encouraging, since the blood sugar benefit in the study was actually largest in people with type 2 diabetes. Even so, a brazzein dessert can still contain fat and calories, and no single swap replaces a diabetes plan. If you have diabetes, treat brazzein foods as one helpful option and keep working with your care team.

Where can I buy brazzein?

It’s still early, so you won’t find it everywhere. A few companies already use brazzein or related sweet proteins in products like iced teas and chocolates, and more are expected as production scales up. Check the ingredient list for “brazzein” or “sweet protein” if you want to try it.