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She's Making Food Taste Just as Sweet With 75% Less Sugar

In this episode, Daniel Epstein sits down with Ali Wing, CEO of Oobli, the Davis, California company that brews sweet proteins through fermentation that work alongside sugar and every other sweetener, so food and drink makers can use far less of them without changing the taste or the cost. Ali joined the Unreasonable Fellowship in 2025 through the Unreasonable Food program, run in partnership with Mars. Sweet proteins come from fruits and berries at the top of the rainforest canopy along the equator, plants that, as Ali tells it, evolved a single protein about 1,000 times sweeter than sugar so they would get eaten. The protein signals sweetness to the brain, then digests like any other protein, with no blood sugar spike and no load on the gut microbiome. Ali is clear that Oobli is not anti-sugar, which she calls a miracle crop. She explains how Oobli teaches a standard yeast to make them, why the research started with a founder's family member who lost her sense of taste during chemotherapy, and why Oobli builds its proteins into the sweeteners food companies already use. The conversation also goes back to Montana, where Ali grew up just outside West Yellowstone, one of 10 children, with seven adopted brothers and sisters and foster kids at the dinner table every night. She talks about her father's love of the parklands, leaving Nike to work deeper on health, and what parenthood taught her about letting go of the plan.