The Truth About Dextrose in Our Beef Sticks
We use a small amount of dextrose in our beef sticks, and we’re telling you because that’s what Proven does. You deserve to know what’s in your food, why it’s there, and what happens to it.
So, here’s the whole story.
What is dextrose?
Dextrose is a simple sugar and a form of glucose, which your body uses for energy. But we don’t add it to make our beef sticks sweeter or to add sugar to the finished product.
We use it for one purpose: to feed the fermentation process.
Dextrose helps fermentation do its job.
Our beef sticks are naturally fermented, and that process relies on good bacteria. When we add a small amount of dextrose to the recipe, it gives those bacteria the quick source of energy they need to get to work.
The bacteria consume the dextrose and produce natural acids that lower the pH of the meat. This helps preserve the beef stick naturally and creates some of the tang you taste, without relying on synthetic nitrates or chemical preservatives.
But here’s the important part: the dextrose gets used up during fermentation.
And we didn’t just assume that was happening. We tested it.
What did the testing show?
Our full-spectrum testing looks for 220 chemical compounds in the finished product, and the results found zero residual dextrose.
We’ve also had people wearing continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) eat our sticks, and they recorded no blood sugar spike.
That’s an important distinction because using a small amount of sugar to support fermentation is very different from adding sugar for sweetness. In many foods, sugar is part of the finished product and is there when you eat it. In our process, dextrose has a specific job: it feeds the bacteria needed for fermentation, and those bacteria consume it along the way.
We don’t think people should stop asking questions about ingredients like dextrose. In fact, we think people should ask more questions about what’s in their food, how it’s made, and what actually ends up in the finished product.
That curiosity is a big part of why Proven exists. We’ll keep testing our food, publishing what we find, and asking questions ourselves because you shouldn’t have to simply take our word for it.
So, is dextrose something to worry about in our beef sticks? We looked at the finished product instead of making assumptions based on the ingredient list. The lab found zero residual dextrose.
There’s an old saying that something that sounds like a big deal but turns out to be nothing is a “nothing burger.”
In this case, we’d call it a ZERO burger.
And we have the testing to back it up.
