Latest Lab Creation: Supercharged Fiber or GLP-1 Hormone Hack?

There is a new food additive powder set to enter the UK food supply, and its developers claim it is nothing more than fiber that will help prevent weight gain. The University of Glasgow and Imperial College London announced last month that their invention, inulin propionate ester (IPE), has cleared regulatory review and snagged a spot on the EU’s approved list of “novel foods.” Announcements about the new weight-loss miracle were uniformly cheery, praising IPE as a cheap, natural way to stop the slow creep of weight gain, which would soon be for all to enjoy, baked into breads and blended into smoothies. But hold on. As with all tinkering with food and the systems that miraculously run our bodies, we must slow down and read the fine print, which often tells a different tale than the press release.

For starters, it is important to understand what IPE actually is, since it is pitched as being simply “two natural ingredients.” Yes, most certainly, inulin is a real fiber found in chicory and onions. And propionate is indeed a short-chain fatty acid made by gut bacteria when they ferment fiber. So far, so good, that part is just as nature intended. However, importantly, IPE is neither one of those things. As explained in the safety opinion from the regulators themselves, IPE is manufactured by reacting inulin with propionic anhydride under alkaline conditions at a controlled temperature. That process occurs only in a lab and then a manufacturing facility, not in nature, and produces a molecule that does not occur in onions, which explains why the product requires a special “novel food” authorization.

The body’s process of digesting fiber is typically designed to be slow and local. As soon as dietary fiber makes its way to the large intestine, it is gradually fermented by bacteria, which release a small amount of propionate. The propionate then signals the colon receptors that activate our satiety hormones, telling the brain that we are full. It is not possible to bypass this process by simply eating propionate, as it would be absorbed in the small intestine long before it reached the colon. With that in mind, IPE is manipulated to provide a workaround. Specifically, Inulin acts as a shell, carrying a concentrated dose of propionate past the small intestine untouched. It is then released at the colon receptors that trigger satiety hormones in a quantity that is far more than the body would ever produce on its own—a process the developers of IPE call “supercharging.” In other words, IPE is a delivery system designed to force the gut to release more of its own GLP-1 and PYY satiety hormones than it otherwise would. The same hormones targeted by the blockbuster weight loss injections, but now manipulated by a food additive instead of a needle.

IPE manipulates hormones, but it is not an endocrine disruptor in the way microplastics and BPA are. Those toxic chemicals mimic and block critical hormones, scrambling the signaling of estrogen and testosterone, which we now know is linked to falling fertility in boys and girls. IPE does not do that, but do not let the distinction glorify IPE. By deliberate design, IPE is a hormone-active compound tweaked to target one of the body’s most elaborate signaling systems and do something unnatural. Remember, our gut hormones do not function in a sealed environment, staying safely put and leaving the rest of the body alone. No indeed. The same messengers connected to appetite also influence blood sugar control, insulin response, and how the body reads fullness over a lifetime. Hmmm. So it seems that engineering and embedding a synthetic daily intervention into that perfect design under the guise of “we only meant to affect appetite” is a hope, not a guarantee, and should be a point of concern.

Which introduces an important consideration about IPE. When the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) signed off on IPE, it waived the need for any deeper safety testing. That’s right—it decided that no genotoxicity studies and no subchronic toxicology were required. According to EFSA, propionate and inulin are already familiar, so the manufactured combination warranted no fresh scrutiny. The regulatory panel even acknowledged that the human trials relied upon in its assessment were designed to measure whether IPE works and its long-term safety. So here we are yet again. A novel creation designed to reprogram our appetite hormones, meant to be consumed every day, was cleared for sale to the “general population” without any dedicated long-term safety studies or a single reproductive study. That criterion indicates the target is not overweight adults who volunteered for a trial. Instead, the target is everyone. Children eating cereal laced with IPE. The elderly eating a packaged muffin, the millennial drinking a power smoothie, and so on. Yet there is no evidence that those groups were ever specifically studied.

But does IPE even work? Interestingly, the impressive result cited by those behind it is a 2015 study involving middle-aged adults. But the more recent, larger, year-long iPREVENT trial in younger adults found that IPE did no better at preventing weight gain than plain inulin. The iPREVENT study also flagged a small but statistically significant rise in fasting glucose in the IPE group. But they declared victory anyway.

The bigger picture shows public research money, funneled through two universities, spun out into a private company called Satisfed, which is now shopping for a Big Food partner to scale it to thousands of tonnes and incorporate it into processed products. And of course, approval in the United States is the stated next goal, most likely through the self-certifying GRAS (generally recognized as safe) loophole, which allows companies to declare their own additives safe. The new cure for a nation made sick by ultra-processed food is another additive in ultra-processed food.

And we can’t ignore the smoke-and-mirrors way in which IPE is promoted. The developers lean on “the known benefits of a high-fiber diet” to pair with IPE. But they fail to mention that nearly all of the studies promoting the benefits of fiber highlight fiber eaten the way it grows, inside beans and oats and vegetables, where it arrives bundled with protein, minerals, and a hundred compounds working together. Critically, the benefit belongs to the nutritious, real food, not to a fraction of it pulled out and rebuilt in a chemical reaction. Along with that, the type of fiber is also important. When comparing fibers, researchers found that insoluble fiber from whole grains tends to show the stronger link to long-term health, while the soluble, fermentable fiber is a weaker performer. IPE is made from inulin, which is the soluble, fermentable kind, delivered as a refined carbohydrate. So again, those behind IPE are borrowing the credibility of the whole plant and fiber as a whole to sell you a stripped-down, modified piece of it.

Here we go again with yet another fake fix targeting an unsuspecting and largely unhealthy population. Simply put, IPE is a carbohydrate solution to a problem that has already been solved by nature. A plate of small farm protein, organic vegetables, and locally grown food does exactly what this lab-created powder promises. It fills you up, steadies your hormones, and needs no intervention from a chemist. As we’ve said before, we have had access to the answer all along. And it cannot be patented, scaled to thousands of tonnes, or sold back to us in a protein bar, smoothie, or wellness shot.