Holding out for a zero: Shoddy Goods 020

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My name is Jason and I’m a sugar addict. I’ve been clean for about an hour and a half. For this issue of Shoddy Goods, the newsletter from Meh about the stuff people make, buy, and sell, I’m looking into why some of my cravings now come in low-calorie sugar-free versions and some don’t. Spoiler alert: don’t expect a diet Twinkie anytime soon.

Walk down the soda aisle at your local grocery store. Chances are about half of the options on the shelves are sugar-free, flavored with a variety of low-calorie chemical sweeteners. Look at the chewing gum section and that proportion will be closer to 100%. Wrigley’s Extra was the only sugar-free gum on the market when it debuted in 1984; now sugar-free gum is so much the norm, it barely rates a mention on the packages.

But, curiously, other categories of sweets remain almost totally untouched by sugar substitutes, like candy bars and snack cakes. What gives? Why is Coke Zero in every gas station but Snickers Zero only in my dreams? Why is it so easy for Americans to get half a dozen flavors of sugar-free Dr. Pepper but no sugar-free Little Debbies?

So I decided to consult some food scientists to find out why. “Sugar in confectionery products doesn’t just provide sweetness,” says Dr. Julia Low, Senior Lecturer in Nutrition and Food Technology (Sensory Science) at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

Uh-oh. As with so many other things, it turns out real life isn’t as simple as I think it should be. I hate when that happens.


Meet fructose. You think you can find sweetness like this just laying around on the street?

It’s all about the molecules

Despite undoubtedly having more legitimate things to do with their time, Dr. Low and her RMIT colleague Dr. Arianna Dick, Lecturer in Food Technology (3D Food Printing, Food Engineering), graciously agreed to answer some of my stupid questions via email.

“The physical structure such as texture and appearance of confectionery is highly influenced by sugar and its state within the product,” says Dr. Dick. “For example, the difference between rock candy and fairy floss (cotton candy) is due to the structural arrangement of sugar. Rock candy exhibits a crystalline structure, while fairy floss has an amorphous or glass-like structure.”

Sugar’s effects can reach beyond its own structure to shape the entire texture of a product. “In cakes, sugar not only enhances flavour but also improves texture by increasing moisture retention, helping to keep the cake moist,” Dr. Dick says.

And that’s not all of sugar’s superpowers, she continues, citing how “sugar contributes to flavour and colour through processes like caramelisation and the Maillard reaction, which can be difficult to replicate with other ingredients.”

Difficult isn’t impossible. But while there are some substances that can sort of imitate some of the unique ways sugar behaves, they have their drawbacks, too.

“Adding other ingredients like proteins and gums to maintain the physical structure of the products can considerably increase production costs,” Dr. Dick says, while “large quantities of sweeteners such as maltitol syrup or isomalt may cause digestive issues.”

OK, that might take some of the fun out of the whole thing.

You’re not ready for this complexity

Of course, there have long been sugar-free chocolates on the market, and even some of the big commercial names have zero- or low-sugar products in their line. But they tend to be sold as nutrition products, like Snickers Hi Protein bars, or as specialized diet foods, like Hershey’s Zero Sugar candies. They’re not offered right alongside the marquee products as a guilt-free but equally indulgent variation on the real thing, the way zero-sugar sodas are.

The scientists say there’s no comparison between the two because candy and cakes are far more complex than fizzy drinks.

“In a product like Coke Zero, artificial sweeteners such as acesulfame potassium (aka as AceK) and aspartame are commonly used as a pair to replicate the sweetness profile of sugar,” Dr. Low says. "These sweeteners are much sweeter than sugar by weight and can have lingering sweetness with occasional bitter or metallic aftertastes.

“Therefore, manufacturers often use blends of sweeteners to better mimic the temporal profile of sugar’s sweetness and minimise undesirable aftertastes.”

Masking those aftertastes is relatively simple in a liquid. But in an intricately constructed solid, every ingredient you add has much more effect on the overall experience.

“When it comes to more complex products like Snickers, the problem becomes much harder to solve,” Dr. Low says. "How chewy is the product or can you hear the chocolate snap? For things like caramel, it is difficult for artificial sweeteners to mimic how we release flavours as we chew them.

“While sugar substitutes may taste ‘close enough’ for a simple product like Coke Zero for some people, they fall short in replicating the multisensory experience of products like Snickers.”


We’ve been chasing the sugar-free dragon since at least the Eisenhower administration.

One person’s yum is another person’s yuck

That complexity isn’t just present in the products themselves. It’s also in our tongues and, to some extent, our heads.

“In semi-solid products, like chocolate bars,” says Dr. Dick, “the perception of flavour can be more strongly impacted by variations in texture and mouthfeel, including differences in the size of sugar crystals or the presence of other ingredients with a gritty feel.”

We all know some soda drinkers who abhor the diet versions and others who won’t drink anything but. That’s because people perceive sweetness differently. A study conducted by Dr. Low tested various sweeteners, both zero-calorie and sugar-based, and found a wide variation in sensitivity to sweetness across 60 participants.

“With glucose, some participants could detect sweetness with less than a quarter-teaspoon of sugar dissolved in a litre of water,” she says, “while others could only notice that the sample tasted different (not like water) at around 4.5 teaspoons of sugar per litre.”

When it takes 18 times more glucose for some people to even be able to sense the sweetness, nailing a mass-market confectionery product with imitation sugar isn’t as easy as it sounds.

Ultimately, though, a consumer product doesn’t live or die by how it tastes, but by how it makes people feel. And all the compromises involved in sugar-free sweets might just add up to too much difference to evoke the same emotions as the traditional calorie-packed counterparts.

“These decisions are not solely dependent on liking,” says Dr. Low. “When a person experiences a piece of unbranded dark chocolate, their reaction is influenced not only by the chocolate itself (e.g., its bitterness or sweetness) but also by their pre-existing personal conceptualisation of dark chocolate. This includes functional associations (e.g., fattening, sugary) and emotional associations (e.g., relaxing, happy).”

Whither pseudosugar?

Hanging over this whole discussion is the question of whether artificial sweeteners are something people should be eating at all. For now, the consensus seems to be that they’re fine in small amounts. But there’s a persistent public conversation among people who wonder about the effects of billions of people guzzling this stuff down throughout the day, every day.

Could this be causing the confectionery industry to hesitate in developing these products? Is sugar, demonized as it is, at least the demon we know?

If a chemical-sweetener backlash is affecting the market, Dr. Low says, “it’s hard to tell! Considering the growing presence of artificially sweetened soft drinks on supermarket shelves in comparison to the past 10 years suggests a strong consumer demand for these products.” Dr. Dick agrees, although she allows that there might be a shift toward some of the more natural sweeteners such as monk fruit extracts.

One thing is clear, though: if I want a keto Ding-Dong, I’m going to have to make it myself. Anybody know where I can score some allulose?

It’s funny that there literally is a candy bar named Zero but apparently that ‘zero’ was just meant to imply that it was…cool? I never knew that. If you could have a zero-calorie version of your favorite candy bar, which would it be? I think I’d go with Heath. Let us know over in this week’s Shoddy Goods chat!

—Dave (and the rest of Meh)

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