I recently bought a packet of muesli and saw “No Added Sugar” on it.
It made me think - what does this even mean? At the same time, I started seeing more and more reels, videos and conversations about sugar and sweeteners. Even school students are talking about “sugar cuts” and removing sugar from their daily food.
So I thought, why not go one step deeper?
Why has sugar suddenly become something we want to avoid? What is actually different between sugar, jaggery, honey, stevia, monk fruit and all these new sweeteners coming into the market? And more importantly - what actually happens after we eat them? So let's decode this simple topic - sweetness with the complex science behind it.
What Happened to Sugar?
We have been consuming sugar for generations.
So why has society suddenly started treating sugar almost like a taboo? The answer isn't that sugar suddenly became dangerous. We have always been able to digest and use it.
The bigger change is how much free sugar we consume and how frequently we encounter it in modern foods. Table sugar is mainly sucrose. When we eat it, digestion breaks sucrose down into glucose and fructose, which are absorbed and metabolised by the body.
Sugar itself isn't something the human body cannot handle.
The problem comes when we consistently consume more free sugar than we need - especially when it adds energy without bringing much nutritional value with it. WHO recommends keeping free sugars below 10% of total daily energy intake, with a further reduction to below 5% providing additional health benefits, particularly for dental health. WHO guideline on sugars intake
So maybe the problem was never simply “sugar.” Maybe it was how much of it we started eating.
Why Is Processed Sugar Facing This?
We've been consuming sugar for centuries. Sugarcane is processed to extract, purify and crystallise sucrose, giving us the white sugar we know today.
And this is important:
Processing doesn't turn sucrose into a completely different molecule. White table sugar is still mainly sucrose. So the question becomes - if sugar is the problem, can we simply replace processed sugar with something that looks more natural?
Processed vs Unprocessed: What's the Difference?
This is where our Indian favourites come in.
Jaggery.
Palm sugar.
Honey.
They are often seen as healthier because they are natural or less refined. But here's where science becomes interesting.
Jaggery is still largely sugar. Honey is also a source of free sugars, and WHO's definition of free sugars includes sugars naturally present in honey, syrups and fruit juices. WHO - Sugars and dental caries
Yes, these foods can contain small amounts of minerals and other compounds that aren't present in refined sugar. But that doesn't mean that replacing sugar with the same amount of jaggery suddenly makes the food healthy.
Natural and unprocessed are not the same thing as metabolically harmless. The source has changed. But the body still has to deal with the sugars and now we reach the really interesting part.
Comes the Zero-Calorie Sweetener
Now we have another category taking over supermarket shelves:
Stevia.
Monk fruit.
Sucralose.
Aspartame.
And then there is another group that you see everywhere:
Erythritol.
Xylitol.
Sorbitol.
Maltitol.
But wait. Are all of these actually the same?
No. They are different types of sweeteners, and they can behave very differently inside the body.
Natural Zero-Calorie Sweeteners
The first question I had was: How can something taste sweet but have almost no calories?
It sounds contradictory. If something tastes sweet, shouldn't the sweetness come from sugar? Not necessarily. This is where sweetness and calories separate from each other.
Stevia
Stevia comes from the Stevia rebaudiana plant. But when you see “stevia” on a food label, you aren't necessarily eating a spoonful of ground stevia leaves.
The intensely sweet compounds are called steviol glycosides, including compounds such as stevioside and rebaudioside A. These compounds are extremely sweet - hundreds of times sweeter than sucrose - so only a very small amount is needed to make a food taste sweet. FDA - High-Intensity Sweeteners
And that's one reason they can contribute essentially no calories at the amounts used to sweeten food. Your tongue gets the sweetness. But you don't need to eat several grams of the sweetener to get that sweetness.
That's the trick.
But where does stevia actually go?
Steviol glycosides aren't handled by the body in exactly the same way as sucrose.
They largely pass through the upper digestive tract and reach the colon, where gut microorganisms break them down into steviol. Steviol is then absorbed, processed by the liver and eventually excreted. EFSA - Safety of steviol glycosides
So “plant-derived” doesn't mean “we just eat the plant.” There is a whole extraction and purification process behind the ingredient that finally reaches your food.
Monk Fruit
Then came monk fruit and this one made me think:
What is so different about this fruit? Why is everyone suddenly talking about it?
Monk fruit, or Siraitia grosvenorii, contains sweet compounds called mogrosides. These compounds are intensely sweet. Depending on the preparation, monk-fruit extracts can be around 100–250 times sweeter than sucrose. FDA - High-Intensity Sweeteners
Again, the same basic idea applies. You don't need anything close to the quantity of sugar required to create the same sweetness. So the sweetness is there.
But the calories that would normally come with several grams of sugar aren't and that is what makes these sweeteners so interesting.
Sugar Alcohols: Another Type of Sweetener
Then we have another family:
Sugar alcohols, or polyols.
Erythritol, xylitol, sorbitol and maltitol are some common examples and no - they're not the same kind of alcohol that you drink.
Their chemistry is different, and their digestion is different from ordinary sugar. Some are absorbed only partially, while erythritol is absorbed much more efficiently and is largely excreted in urine. They generally produce a much smaller blood-glucose response than sucrose. FDA - Sugars metabolized differently
But here comes the catch.
Your gut gets a vote. Depending on the type and amount, polyols can cause bloating, gas or diarrhoea. This is particularly relevant with larger amounts of some polyols. Review of polyols and gastrointestinal effects
So “sugar-free” doesn't automatically mean “eat unlimited amounts.”
So How Can They Be Zero Calories?
This is probably the biggest question in this entire story. How can something be sweet but have almost no calories?
The answer is that not every sweetener creates sweetness and energy in the same way.
Take sugar - Five grams of sucrose provides roughly 20 calories because sucrose is digested into glucose and fructose, which can be absorbed and metabolised.
Now take a high-intensity sweetener like stevia - You need such a tiny amount to create the same sweetness that the amount consumed contributes very little energy.
That's why sweetness and calories don't necessarily have to travel together. But not every alternative sweetener is literally zero-calorie.
For example, allulose is chemically a sugar, but the body handles much of it differently from conventional sugars. FDA uses 0.4 kcal/g for allulose when calculating calories for nutrition labelling, rather than the 4 kcal/g used for conventional sugars. FDA - Allulose and calories
So when we say “zero-calorie sweetener,” we need to be careful.
Stevia, monk fruit, erythritol and allulose aren't interchangeable. They have different chemistry, different sweetness, different absorption and different metabolism.
So, Should We Be Afraid of Sweeteners?
At this rate, I sometimes wonder whether my kid will even “see” sugar in the foods he grows up eating.
People are becoming sharper and I'm one of them.
I am the same person who once ate one full tin of gulab jamun with a full tub of ice cream. Now I turn the packet around and read the label before I eat something. And honestly, I don't think that is a bad thing. But I also don't think we need to create another extreme.
Sugar is not suddenly poisonous and replacing sugar with a sweetener doesn't automatically make a food healthy. Science is much more interesting than that.
Different sweeteners behave differently in the body. Some provide substantial energy. Some provide very little. Some can affect the gut when consumed in larger amounts. And some have much more long-term human evidence than others.
There is also ongoing discussion around what long-term use of non-sugar sweeteners means for health, and the evidence isn't as simple as “natural is good” or “artificial is bad.” WHO - Non-sugar sweeteners guideline
So maybe the better question isn't:
Which sweetener is the healthiest?
Maybe it is:
What exactly is making this food sweet, how much of it am I consuming, and what happens after I eat it?
Because perhaps the future isn't about finding the perfect sweetener. It is about understanding sweetness itself.
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