Fooditive publishes full safety file as 5-KDF sweetener reaches GRAS milestone

Fooditive has completed an eight-year development journey for its Keto-Fructose sweetener, 5-Dehydro-D-fructose or 5-KDF, by publishing its full primary safety data and confirming the ingredient has achieved self-affirmed GRAS status, with a notification currently under review by the US Food and Drug Administration.

Fooditive has published five OECD-aligned safety studies for its 5-KDF sweetener, reporting no intrinsic genotoxic or cytotoxic effects under stated test conditions.

The ingredient has achieved self-affirmed GRAS status and a notification is under active FDA review.

The company has released the complete safety file publicly to support independent scientific and regulatory evaluation.

The Rotterdam-based food biotechnology company disclosed the milestone on February 18, 2026, describing the move as part of a broader commitment to transparency in regulatory science.

The safety file covers five OECD-aligned studies evaluating genotoxic and cytotoxic effects using human-relevant test methods. According to Fooditive, no intrinsic genotoxic or cytotoxic effects were observed under the stated test conditions, with appropriate controls and purified material.

Founder and CEO Moayad Abushokhedim framed the publication of the full dataset as a deliberate decision to support scrutiny rather than rely on summary claims.

“Transparency builds confidence. By publishing our full primary safety data, we are supporting independent scientific and regulatory evaluation of 5-KDF,” he said.

5-KDF, marketed as a Keto-Fructose sweetener, has been developed using enzymatic bioconversion. The approach uses enzymes as catalysts to transform a simple carbohydrate into a functional sweetener designed to replicate sugar’s performance characteristics in formulations, including browning, bulk, texture and baking stability.

Abushokhedim founded Fooditive in 2018 after relocating from Jordan to Rotterdam with the aim of developing ingredient technologies that could compete on price as well as performance.

He argued that the economics of ingredient development directly affect end-product pricing.

“If the goal is a sweetener that manufacturers can actually afford to use at scale, you cannot start by burning through a hundred million in R&D,” he said. “That cost does not disappear. It gets baked into the product. We kept spending disciplined from day one because the end price was always the point.”

The company stated that the ingredient has achieved self-affirmed GRAS status and that its GRAS notification is currently under active review by the FDA. In the United States, self-affirmed GRAS allows companies to determine that an ingredient is generally recognized as safe based on scientific procedures, while FDA review of a submitted notification provides an additional layer of regulatory assessment.

Fooditive’s announcement comes as regulatory scrutiny around novel ingredients and GRAS procedures continues to evolve. The FDA has indicated it is considering reforms to the GRAS framework that could increase submission requirements, while broader consumer and regulatory expectations around data transparency have intensified.

Abushokhedim described this shift as structural rather than cyclical.

“The era of ‘trust us’ in food safety is ending,” he said. “What comes next is ‘show us.’ We are not waiting for that shift. We are already there.”

By making the complete safety file publicly accessible, Fooditive has invited regulators, scientists, manufacturers and journalists to examine the underlying data directly. The company stated that this approach is intended to support independent evaluation rather than rely solely on summarized conclusions.

Fooditive has indicated that it is now working with partners and inviting food and beverage manufacturers to test 5-KDF across applications including baked goods, dairy, beverages and confectionery.

“It needs to work in real formulations and it needs to be priced so manufacturers will actually switch,” Abushokhedim said. “That is what we built. And today, we are putting every page of the science on the table for the world to judge.”

Founded in 2018, Fooditive operates a modular precision fermentation and bioconversion platform known as the Fooditive Engine. The company develops ingredient technologies including functional sweeteners, animal-free casein proteins and fermentation-derived enzymes, and licenses these technologies to partners rather than manufacturing finished ingredients directly.

The company stated that its technologies are designed for industrial-scale production and are supported by publicly available safety data.

With the publication of the 5-KDF safety file and FDA review ongoing, Fooditive has moved from development to regulatory validation and commercial testing, marking a significant stage in the ingredient’s path toward potential market adoption.