The Sweet Spot That Does Not Exist
Sugar reduction is one of the few ideas everyone agrees on. Consumers demand it. Retailers require it. Governments reward it… You get the picture.
But if you’re the one actually responsible for making something taste good without sugar, you quickly learn that the world of “natural” sweeteners isn’t a paradise—it’s a maze of contradictions.
So, what actually counts as “natural”?
Ask the FDA and you’ll get a shrug—there’s no formal definition.
Ask Natural Grocers and you’ll get a list that reads like the Ten Commandments rewritten by a chemistry major. Whole Foods has its own version. Canada has another.
Between them all, you can use stevia (but not Reb-M), monk fruit (only if extracted the right way), erythritol (sometimes), xylitol (occasionally), and allulose—well, that depends on which side of the border—or moral line—you’re standing on.
Here’s the irony: In a recent project for a natural-foods retailer, I couldn’t use allulose—a sugar that naturally occurs in figs and raisins—because it wasn’t considered “natural” enough. Yet I could use xylitol, a chemically hydrogenated sugar alcohol made from corn cobs or birch trees.
The molecule that literally exists in fruit juice was off-limits. The one created through industrial chemistry got the green light.
The real challenge isn’t in the lab—it is in the policy minefield.
When you’re tasked with making something “naturally sweetened,” you’re not just balancing acids and Brix—you’re balancing consumer expectations, retailer compliance, and the existential dread of reading yet another “Approved Ingredient List” that forgot how food science actually works.
And now, California’s new law on “ultra-processed foods” (Assembly Bill 1264) is raising the stakes. Starting in 2035, the state will phase out certain ingredients like non-nutritive sweeteners, gums, and flavorings from K-12 schools.
It’s a landmark move—part victory for clean-label advocates, part headache for formulators. On one hand, it’s progress: kids deserve better food. On the other, it’s paradoxical: we’re asked to reduce sugar while also banning many of the tools that help us do it. (Ironically, California’s fine with allulose, though.)
So what are the options?
Let’s break down the usual suspects:
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Stevia – The old guard of natural sweeteners. Reliable and stable but often too assertive. Reb-M helps smooth out the bitterness, but some “natural” lists reject it because it’s enzymatically derived.
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Monk Fruit – When pure, it’s elegant and clean—but costly. It’s often blended with erythritol, which can disqualify a “no sugar alcohols” claim. Also brings its own off-notes if not balanced properly.
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Erythritol – Technically natural if you consider fermentation nature-adjacent. Great functionality, but recently out of favor thanks to headlines.
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Xylitol – Approved and common, but not without its digestive quirks—and deadly for dogs.
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Allulose – The closest thing to sugar in taste and function. Clean flavor, browning ability, zero glycemic impact—but still viewed skeptically by some “natural” retailers.
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Inulin, chicory, and soluble fibers – Useful as bulking agents and mild sweeteners, but easy to overdo—too much fiber leads to, well, too much fiber. Still, these may represent the next wave of natural sweetness.
Formulation as philosophy
Every clean-label project eventually turns into a philosophical exercise disguised as product development. You have to decide which definition of “natural” you’re willing to defend—because someone, somewhere, will call you wrong.
For me, the only reliable compass is context.
You can make a “natural” sorbet from fruit, water, and stevia if your goal is compliance. But if your goal is joy, you have to reach deeper. Sometimes that means pushing for better ingredient transparency and more rigorous science. Other times it means reminding everyone that “natural” and “good” aren’t always synonyms.
Because at the end of the day, sweeteners aren’t the problem—definitions are.
Until the industry—and our regulators—start defining food by what it is rather than how it was made, we’ll keep playing this strange game where taste, science, and common sense rarely align.
For now, I’ll be in the lab, chasing that mythical sweet spot—and trying to make the next generation of “natural” sweetness actually taste natural.
