Refined sugar has become a villain these days. Many products which we use to buy from different places have had refined sugar as the main ingredient. With rising cases of diabetes and India becoming the diabetes capital of the world market is flooded with many sugar free products. This is one of the fastest growing market in India. With more and more Indians choosing products which are refined sugar free many brands have grown very big and have seen very fast adoption by the customers. There are so many sugar free alternatives which are being used in the market these days. FSSAI also started noticing these trends and have been actively working with businesses to get the right products into the market.
With all the noise of marketing in different media platforms be it social media or traditional, customers are flooded with so much false information that they are still falling into the trap of blind trust. Brands are positioning themselves as custodians of customer health where they drive the purchasing behavior through scare tactics and various marketing tactics. Buyers need to be very careful about what they buy, always understand the ingredients, their side effects short-term and long-term and if these products are truthful to the stories they tell. In this article we would be giving a view of different sugar-free alternatives which are widely used these days and real impact they create on our bodies. We would like to clarify that this is not against specific brand or company but to educate the buyers to make the right purchase decisions. We have tried to collect this information from different sources and articles published by reputed firms. This information will become the base of decision making for you to choose the products with clean ingredients.
Types of Sugar Free Alternatives
Even though the list is very exhaustive, depending upon the usage in the market, we tried to cover as many as possible. We will cover each of the categories of sweeteners explaining how they impact our health.
Artificial Sweeteners
These sweeteners are created through chemical process and are widely used to sweeten candies, food products in food and beverages industry. They don’t have nutrition value or calorie value leading them to be considered as good for managing sugar. But there is a caveat!! There is research on these ingredients which has made health care professionals consider them as harmful to our health and some of these can be carcinogenic when used regularly.
Even though these ingredients are approved by the authorities for limited usage we need to be very cautious when using the products containing these. Considering the adverse effects these ingredients might cause to our health, we should completely avoid products with these ingredients.
Sugar Alcohols
This is an interesting topic to dwell upon. Sugar Alcohols are vogue these days with brands using them widely in their products show casing them as safe to consume and not having any adverse effects on health. These are also used as fillers to cover the recipe gap when novel sweeteners like stevia or monk fruit extract are used. But what are these Sugar Alcohols?
Sugar Alcohols are commercially made artificial sweeteners but are also derived from natural sugars which occur from different types of fruits or vegetables. They might have the same or less sweetness compared to refined sugar. Sugar Alcohols are a combination of sugar and alcohol molecules. Let me give you a shock!!! These are not completely calorie free. They are just considered safe because they have less calorie value than refined sugar. But they fall in low digestive carbs where our bodies do not absorb the calories in them completely making them the go to ingredients for sugar free treats.
The impending question we have is are these safe for us?
We had to dig deeper on this on the research available on sugar alcohols. What we found is that while sugar alcohols do not contribute to the rise in sugar levels in our body they can cause issues like irritable bowl syndrome, digestions issues and importantly cardiovascular issues if used regularly. A study by Cleveland Clinic revealed that sugar alcohols can cause various long term ailments like clogging blood vessels and increase inflammation in the body leading to various cardiovascular ailments. Research on sugar alcohols is still in progress and FSSAI regulates the usage of sugar alcohols restricting their usage at permitted levels to reduce their impact.
Our take on Sugar Alcohols in chocolate industry
We feel usage of sugar alcohols has increased dramatically in the recent years where they are used more than the permitted levels. If someone sells 55% dark sugar free chocolate with sugar alcohols as sweetener then the 45% of the chocolate is sugar alcohol which is very high considering the effects they might have on our body. Milk and white chocolate sold in this segment are much more worse. When we were considering to launch Zero Sugar Chocolates we had to decide to not go for these as these might not be clean ingredients due to the way they are manufactured and the adverse effects they might have on our customer’s health.
Novel Sweeteners
Novel sweeteners are natural plant- based sweeteners which offer lot more than being calorie free. The most used ones are Stevia and Monk Fruit. These sweeteners not only calorie free, have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. Their sweetness quotient is higher than refined sugar and are used in limited quantities. Due to scarce availability or production of these ingredients they are more expensive compared to all the other sweeteners.
All sounds good but there are a lot of challenges using these sweeteners in chocolate industry. The first is the taste profile where these sweeteners leave a very awkward after taste when consumed. Due to their higher sweetness they cannot be used to completely replace refined sugar as a percentage without fillers, which are sugar alcohols. You will rarely see or not at all find any product in India where fillers haven’t been used to suppress the taste profile of these sweeteners. Due to the cost of these being high it becomes commercially not viable to launch products which can be accepted by masses. From a regulatory perspective FSSAI, during their instructions released in November 2023, clearly forbids the usage of stevia in chocolate products. Even for novel sweeteners like monk fruit, FSSAI has clear restriction on how much quantity can be used. With these restrictions we cannot use these sweeteners with out fillers like sugar alcohols.
Recent research has found that novel sweeteners can cause adverse effects like bloating, nausea, low blood pressure, hormonal effects, heart problems, impact to kidney function etc.
Even though Novel Sweeteners make a great replacement for refined sugar, considering their cost , availability and side effects associated with long term usage, we had to give up the idea of using them in our products.
Traditional Sweeteners
Traditional sweeteners are something which existed before the advent of refined sugar as we know now. Indians learnt to make muscovado or Desi Khand or Jaggery 1000's of years back making it staple and used in Ayurvedic medicines as well. Like Indians various other cultures have also got their own natural plant-based sweeteners like agave in Mesoamerica. These sweeteners are inherent to the culture and are considered healthy providing the required nutrition and other benefits like rich in antioxidant properties, Gut/Digestion friendly and many more. Being traditional to our households depending upon the geography we are in, these sweeteners were part of our daily life. With very little side effects and being less processed compared to other manufactured alternatives these sweeteners become the best choice.
Our first choice for making chocolate was muscovado due to it availability, nutrition profile, how it enhances the taste notes of the chocolate. Even though Muscovado is unrefined form sugarcane, it is considered healthier than the refined sugar due to its benefits and mineral content. For sugar free varieties we have chosen whole dates as the benefits over weigh of any sweeteners available for usage in chocolate making. We did want to try date powder or sugar but because of processing of the dates to make these there is loss of nutrition value the whole dates provide.
Please don’t think we are building a case here to show all the above sweeteners in bad light. This is something which has been published in different research reports and regulatory prescriptions. All we are doing is to bring these together. Next time when you are purchasing chocolate or any product look at the ingredients list.
As a conclusion, we should avoid anything which is heavy processed and has long-term effects on our health. Do not buy into all the noise in the market. Observe, Understand, Try and Adopt.
Take Wise Decisions and Live Healthy!!!!
For any queries or inputs if you have any please write to us at feedback@soothys.in
The following are some interesting articles for you to read:
https://www.uhhospitals.org/blog/articles/2022/08/are-natural-sweeteners-healthier-than-sugar
https://fssai.gov.in/upload/advisories/2023/11/6565d677e468eSteviol_23Nov2023.pdf
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/what-to-know-about-sugar-alcohols
https://www.uhhospitals.org/blog/articles/2022/08/are-natural-sweeteners-healthier-than-sugar
