We created Bonumose for the purpose of commercializing Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Daniel Wichelecki’s enzymatic technology breakthrough for the production of affordable, delicious, healthy tagatose. Since then, Bonumose has developed methods for producing additional affordable ingredients, such as allulose, allose, D-mannose, and others.

Bonumose’s vision is to earn a place among the world’s most trusted food ingredient manufacturers.

With a mindset of business as a moral imperative, Bonumose uses the acronym COVER to describe who, what, where and how we intend to serve:

Customers/Consumers: Through our affordable, delicious, healthy sugars, we will empower our food & beverage customers to produce tasty food without trade-offs. By sincerely and tirelessly serving our customers and theirs, the rest will fall into place.

Owners: We will create wealth for our owners.

Value Chain: We will enable wealth-creation opportunities for our suppliers, distribution partners, and others in the value chain.

Employees: We will support employees’ livelihoods, career development, and personal growth goals, helping them provide for themselves and their families through the dignity of meaningful work, in an environment of mutual respect and concern, while sharing in Company profit.

Realm: We intend to make a lasting, positive impact on the world through that which is mentioned above, including betterment of public health and private wealth.

Ed Rogers, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder. Mr. Rogers has 30 years of entrepreneurial business experience as a founder, investor, adviser and lawyer. Before co-founding Bonumose, he practiced law for 11 years, co-founded an animal food technology company based on university technology, and designed/implemented a grant-funded venture investment endowment for a foundation in rural Virginia. He has Bachelor of Arts and Juris Doctor degrees from the University of Virginia.

Daniel Wichelecki, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer and Co-Founder. Dr. Wichelecki is the inventor of Bonumose’s novel enzymatic pathway for low-cost tagatose production, as well as the processes for our growing portfolio of nourishing rare sugars. He also has rare expertise at discovering natural enzymes to perform desired functions. Dr. Wichelecki has degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (BS, Molecular and Cellular Biology; PhD, Biochemistry).

See our LinkedIn page for more about our team.

Tagatose is a delicious, versatile, rare sugar:

Occurs in tiny quantities in some fruits and grains.

Is not fake or weird tasting. Tagatose tastes nearly identical to sucrose (table sugar), without any bitter notes or off-flavors. 90% as sweet as regular sugar.

Similar technical properties as regular sugar; easy full or partial replacement of traditional sweeteners in a variety of foods & beverages.

Blends well with high-intensity sweeteners (e.g., Stevia), improving their flavor and providing bulk/mouthfeel.

Healthy: low glycemic index (only 3, compared to 68 for sucrose and 100 for glucose); safe for teeth; low-calorie; good for gut health.

Tagatose has been available commercially for over 15 years, but it is very expensive. The typical production process starts with relatively high-cost raw material (usually derived from milk), has expensive processing steps, and results in relatively low yields. Bonumose’s breakthrough process, however, starts with low-cost, abundant, plant-based raw material; has relatively inexpensive, enzymatic processing steps; and results in extremely high yields.

Bonumose’s enzymatic technology platform is extendable to additional rare sugars including allulose, allose and others. Each of these will enjoy the same advantages of high-yields, high-purities, and cost-competitiveness compared to processes used by other companies.

Unlike many sugar alternatives on the market today, tagatose is not artificial. It was not discovered by accident by a chemist working with coal tar, or frankenstein-ed together by inserting chlorine molecules into sugar. Tagatose is a rare sugars because it occurs in nature but only in tiny quantities.

Tagatose is found in apples, some grains, and the cacao tree (from which chocolate is derived). Unfortunately, the amounts are so small that it would not be sustainable — environmentally or economically — to try to harvest tagatose from those plants.

Enzymes are proteins that facilitate biochemical reactions. They convert one molecule into something else. In our bodies, as well as in our gardens, our pets, and even the bacteria living among us that we cannot see, enzymes are hard at work helping us all grow, survive and thrive by converting nutrients into energy.

Enzymes occur naturally in foods (e.g., pineapple, honey, banana, etc.) and also have been used for millennia to make food such as cheese and yogurt. In recent years, their use in food processing has expanded to many different types of products.

Bonumose has unique ability to discover enzymes to enable the economically and environmentally sustainable mass production of healthy ingredients from globally-abundant plant material. Because tagatose has the same number of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms as found in the glucose molecules linked together in plant-derived starch, Bonumose can utilize enzymes in a precise way to produce large quantities of affordable, pure, nutritious good-for-you tagatose in an economical and environmentally sustainable fashion.

Tagatose is healthy and still great tasting:

Low glycemic. Tagatose has a glycemic index of 3 compared to 68 for sucrose and 100 for glucose. Consumption of tagatose does not increase blood sugar or insulin. In fact, tagatose was proven in phase 3 clinical trials to decrease blood sugar levels in diabetics, and is approved in European food labeling regulations for blood glucose lowering claims.

Safe for teeth. Tagatose does not cause dental cavities. In fact, tagatose is proven to break-up dental biofilm. So not only does it not hurt dental health, it actually improves it.

Low-calorie. Tagatose has only 38% of regular sugar’s calories. Tagatose is absorbed only 20% in the small intestine, with 80% entering the large intestine where it feeds the good gut bacteria. There’s evidence tagatose actually contributes to weight loss, not weight gain.

Prebiotic. Tagatose is a prebiotic. It is like soluble dietary fiber. In the large intestine, it increases the production of beneficial short-chain fatty acids, leading to a healthy gut. Good gut health is associated with good brain function and overall health.

Tagatose is not just not bad for you. It is good for you. Beyond benign, tagatose is beneficial. Here is more health information about tagatose.

Robert Frost said “something there is that doesn’t love a wall.”

With apologies to the master poet, we think “something there is that doesn’t love unaffordable healthy food.” Where’s the good in unnecessary barriers between your family and nutritious food? Ideally, shouldn’t good-for-you food have a good price? If the choice of healthy food is available only for those with healthy incomes, there is something unsatisfying about that. At least to us.

Because of our breakthrough enzymatic technology, healthy, delicious tagatose and allulose will be available in the near future for a small fraction of the cost other companies charge today. We are making good-for-you sugar affordable for widespread use in your favorite foods and beverages.

First, and importantly, tagatose tastes great. Tagatose is not fake and is not weird-tasting. It does not have off-taste or bitter notes. Tagatose is 92% as sweet as sucrose (table sugar), and its sweetness is consistent with sucrose across all concentrations (see here). Bad taste is not a precondition of healthiness!

Sweetness is but one of the positive features of sucrose (regular sugar). It also provides bulk and structure for foods, reduces water activity to help prevent food spoilage, depresses freezing temperature to make ice cream smooth, caramelizes, and does a variety of other things.

High-intensity sweeteners — such as stevia, monk fruit, sucralose, aspartame and others — have benefits. But because they are so sweet by volume, they do not have the ability to add bulk, structure or mouthfeel to foods and beverages. Next time you’re in the grocery store and see one of these on the shelf, take a look at the ingredients list. What do you see listed first? Probably maltodextrin or dextrose. Those ingredients are there to provide bulk to the high-intensity sweetener, and those ingredients has the same calories as regular sugar.

Other sugar alternatives, such as sugar alcohols, often have much less sweetness than sucrose, which requires more volume to achieve the same sweetness. Furthermore, sugar alcohols do not have the ability to caramelize, or produce the desirable browning in baked goods.

Unlike some other sugar alternatives, tagatose is fully functional in foods and beverages.

Tagatose…here are a few general features, but more details (including some examples in applications) are described here.

90% as sweet as sucrose • Clean taste • Sweetness potency relative to sucrose is consistent across concentrations (unlike some other sweeteners) • Provides a sweet, fruity, caramel-like flavor profile • Blends well with other high-intensity sweeteners and longer polysaccharides • Absorbs water from the environment and retains it just as well as sucrose • Reduces water activity better than sucrose • Anti-microbial • Reduces stickiness • Accelerates browning • Readily crystallizes • Depresses freezing point

We believe entrepreneurs must have a focus angel and a vision angel (in the shoulder angel sense). Focus is necessary, but not sufficient. Vision for new opportunities also is essential.

At Bonumose, we currently are focused on scaling up tagatose and other rare sugars to commercial production levels. But we also are expanding our portfolio of good-for-you sugars and functional food ingredients.

In addition to building innovative enzymatic pathways for production of our own ingredients, we sometimes use our enzyme discovery and enzymatic pathway design abilities in collaboration with third-party strategic partners.

September 9, 2024, AgFunder (Elaine Watson), “Sugar Replacement: Bonumose Secures Preliminary Victory Over ‘Arbitrary and Capricious’ FDA On Tagatose Labeling” [link]

July 8, 2024, Roquette & Bonumose Sign A Global Cooperation Agreement Supporting Tagatose Growth, press release

March 11, 2024, Tagatose Achieves Prebiotic Certification

July 14, 2023, Symrise + Bonumose collaboration

May 9, 2023, Mornings With Maria, Ed Rogers (Bonumose’s CEO) was interviewed by Maria Bartiromo

March 9, 2023, FoodDive (Megan Poinski), “How Bonumose’s New Tagatose Facility Moves Better-For-You Sweeteners Forward” [link]

March 2, 2023, Press Release: “New Manufacturing and Advanced R&D Facility” [link] [Ed Rogers’ remarks] [Ceremonial 1st Spoonful]

January 30, 2023, ASR Press Release, “Bonumose Begins Production of Tagatose” [link]

May 10, 2022, “Bonumose Selected As a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum” [link]

January 31, 2022, FoodBusinessNews (Jeff Gelski), “Brazzein, ‘Rare Sugar’ Step Up in Sugar Reduction” [link]

December 16, 2021, DairyReport.com (Jim Cornall), “Approvals for Low-Cost Low-Cal Tagatose Sweetener” [link]

December 13, 2021, “Bonumose’s Low-Cost Tagatose Process Receives Key Health Agency Approvals; Construction of First Production Facility on Schedule for Spring 2022 Opening” [link] [PDF]

October 21, 2021, FoodDive (Megan Poinski), “Bonumose breaks ground on Hershey-funded production and R&D facility” [link] [PDF]

October 19, 2021, NOSH (Erin Cabrey), “Bonumose to open new facility to grow Hershey’s partnership” [link (behind firewall)]

October 15, 2021, Food Navigator (Elaine Watson), “Bonumose gears up for 2022 launch of rare sugar tagatose using novel approach; allulose to follow …” [link] [PDF] 

October 14, 2021, Hershey Company blog post about Bonumose

October 14, 2021, Bakers Journal, “Bonumose to partner with Hershey to develop reduced- and zero-sugar products in Virginia facility” [link] [PDF]

October 14, 2021, CEO Ed Rogers’ remarks at Governor’s announcement of Bonumose’s expansion [video]

October 14, 2021, Bonumose Expands in Albemarle County, Virginia: Governor’s press release; local news coverage (NBC 29; CBS 19; Daily Progress)

August 4, 2021, Food Navigator (Elaine Watson), “‘Some carbs are better than others …’ Unilever, Hershey, General Mills urge FDA to look again at the labeling of sugars metabolized differently than traditional sugars” [link] [PDF]

August 3, 2021, “Allulose Patents Granted to Bonumose for Unique Enzymatic Conversion Process” [link]

March 3, 2021, Novasep and Bonumose announce a strategic collaboration for high-purity rare sugars processing scale-up [PDF]

February 18, 2021, Food Navigator (Elaine Watson), “Sugar reduction game changer? Hershey, ASR Group invest in startup paving way for ‘mass market adoption’ of allulose, tagatose” [link] [PDF]

February 18, 2021, Food Business News (Sam Danley), “Hershey sets sights on better-for-you confections” [link] [PDF]

February 18, 2021, FoodBev Media (Antonia Garrett Peel), “Bonumose secures investment from Hershey and ASR Group.” [link] [PDF]

February 17, 2021, FoodDive, (Christopher Doering), “Hershey’s ‘big bet’ on better-for-you confections” [link] [PDF]

February 17, 2021, “Hershey’s and American Sugar Refining Invest in Bonumose” [link] [PDF]

February 17, 2021, “Hershey Sets Sights On Leading Better-for-you Confection” [link] [PDF]

February 17, 2021, “ASR Group Announces Strategic Investment In Bonumose, Inc. To Bring Lower-Cost, Plant-Based Sugar Alternatives To The Market” [link] [PDF]

August 24, 2020, Next Gen Nutrition Investment Fund Announces Bonumose Investment and Collaboration

July 14, 2020, “Low-Calorie Rare Sugars Enter Sugar Reduction Category,” FoodBusinessNews

June 4, 2020, Perfect Keto, “D-Tagatose Sweetener: Calories, Benefits, and Side Effects” [link] [PDF]

April 9, 2019, Bonumose Successfully Concludes Trade Secret Litigation

January 2, 2019, Tagatose Patents in China and Canada

September 21, 2018 – U.S. Patent to be Issued for “Enzymatic Production of D-Tagatose”

January 18, 2018 – Series A Round for Bonumose and Good-For-You Sugars

November 1, 2017 (BBC) – The Problem Facing Trump’s China Probe

July 30, 2017, For Bonumose, Success is Sweet – And Low in Calories

May 25, 2017, Rare Sugar Tagatose Could be Viewed as Fiber

Bonumose, Inc.
1500 State Farm Boulevard
Charlottesville, VA 22911
+1 (434) 212-3239

Click here for our standard B2B sales Terms & Conditions.

Interested in the beyond better-for-you movement?

Well, maybe not a movement, but good-for-you sugar is a real thing. Tagatose does not increase blood sugar, is low calorie, does not cause tooth decay, tastes great, and can be used in foods/beverages like regular sugar is.

Bonumose is making healthy sugar affordable for more people. 

To inquire about current openings, email us at careers [at] bonumose.com. Even in times when we do not have any advertised open positions, we always are happy to hear from smart men and women who share our interest in food-for-health.

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