An indulgent treat without the sugar?
Consumers will take some convincing, presenting an uphill task for confectionery and sweet baked goods manufacturers in reformulation efforts as pressure mounts to encourage and promote healthier eating habits.
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Rising obesity rates and the prevalence of type 2 diabetes and heart disease are among the key factors driving the agenda around sugar reduction in our favourite treats, but not all consumers are necessarily willing to compromise. Cutting down the sweet stuff is also not as straight forward as lowering the salt content because sugar plays other roles in the food we eat.
That’s a major challenge for industry players, with portion control or smaller servings perhaps the most viable route. Without a regulatory framework around compulsory reduction targets to create a level playing field, manufacturers run the gauntlet of losing customers, and money.
Two giants in the confectionery sector on both sides of the Atlantic, Mondelez International and Nestlé, for instance, have tested the waters. But the former scrapped its lower-sugar Cadbury Dairy Milk bars in 2023 and the latter axed its better-for-you Milkybar Wowsomes in 2020.
While packaged goods manufacturers in Europe and North America have made progress in cutting sugar, calories and salt over the past decade or two, there’s still a sample of the population that wants to indulge in a less-than healthy treat, says Hank Cardello, an executive for Health and Prosperity at the Business for Impact Centre, Georgetown University.
As with any alternatives, taste is crucial for lower-sugar products or substitutes using sweeteners etc., followed by convenience and affordability, and if they don’t taste the same as the real deal, then it’s game lost, the former food and drinks industry executive suggests.
There are two camps – those seeking a “magic bullet” to sugar reduction without losing taste and those that simply don’t care for alternatives, with scant regard for eating healthy and/or scrutinising labels, Cardello says.
“We’re talking to ourselves with all these labelling programmes because the people that are really the target to try to help them don’t care,” he explains.
“These companies would be more than happy to sell lower sugar, lower sodium, lower whatever, all day long, if they can get the taste. The food industry, unlike let’s say pharmaceuticals, doesn’t spend much money on R&D, and big innovation is typically a line extension.
“Maybe there’s some government incentives to get companies to spend more on R&D and to really make those breakthroughs they need to make in this arena because right now, they’re nibbling around the edges.
“You have stevia and allulose and other natural types of sweeteners that aren’t half bad, but sometimes they’re just not the same. And the consumers, when the day is done, they’re the voters.”
Tightening the noose
There could be a solution, compulsory reduction targets. But Cardello says when it comes to confectionery like chocolate there isn’t necessarily a silver bullet, while he admits progress could be made in cutting the sugar in sweet baked goods such as donuts, and fat too.
“Let’s say you create a one-size-fits-all across multiple categories. You run up against standards of identity. If you want to call something chocolate, it has to be formulated a certain way, a certain amount of sugar, fats, etc. You can go to things like chocolate light or whatever, but it’s not the same,” he explains.
“After four analyses, starting in 2016, I can’t find any correlation between consuming chocolate and candy and obesity. That’s why I have problems with the one-size-fits-all approach. Each category is very different.”
Washington-based non-profit The Centre for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) joined with the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to lobby the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2023 to set sugar reduction targets across the food supply chain.
“It would be easier for food companies to reduce added sugar in their products if they could be sure they wouldn’t lose customers to other food companies that maintained higher levels of added sugars in their products,” the CSPI tells Just Food as it urges US authorities to lower “excessive amounts of added sugars” in food and drink products.
“The FDA already has a similar programme setting short term, voluntary targets for sodium reduction in various categories of processed, packaged, and prepared foods. A parallel programme to reduce added sugars in the food supply is another necessary strategy to improve Americans’ diets and advance population health.”
Asked for an update, the FDA tells Just Food via a spokesperson that the regulator held consultations with federal agencies and private industry groups in 2023 to discover the actions being taken to cut down on added sugars.
The feedback centered on labelling, consumer awareness, consumer education, marketing practices, and food reformulation, it says.
Voluntary targets
However, compulsory sugar reduction targets have not ensued. Instead, the FDA updated its “healthy” food labelling guidance in December 2024 to include voluntary limits on sugar for the first time but confectionery and sweet baked goods did not feature. Implementation was then pushed back earlier this year.
At that December point, the FDA also proposed front-of-pack nutrition labels to identify the added sugar content per serving to help consumers make informed choices.
In the UK, McKinsey Global Institute conducted a UK study in 2014 ranking so-called “interventions”, or preventative measures to lower obesity rates connected with food and drinks, coming up with a 16-strong list.
Portion control was at the top of the tree, followed by reformulation and the availability of high calorie food and beverages. Weight management and parental education ranked fourth and fifth. Labelling measures stood at number nine, price promotions at ten, and a suggested 10% tax on high sugar/fat products at 13.
A voluntary sugar, salt and calorie reduction formulation programme was launched by the UK government in 2016 but its implementation was delayed by the Covid pandemic.
In March 2024, authorities confirmed that businesses were being given until the end of 2025 to deliver the sugar and calorie reduction targets.
“Reformulation to improve products’ nutrition profiles can be done either by increasing levels of certain ingredients (such as vitamins or fibre) or by reducing others (such as free sugar, salt or saturated fat),” the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology concluded in 2021.
“Additional reasons to reformulate include environmental, ethical or supply chain benefits, as well as reducing cost.”
Whatever the reasons or rationale for reformulation around added sugars, confectionery and sweet backed goods manufacturers risk losing money if they don’t deliver an equally good product. That’s the challenge, especially so if compulsory targets from regulators emerge.
Indicative of the sensitive nature, Mondelez, Swiss chocolate maker Lindt & Sprüngli and biscuits and crackers producer Pladis declined to comment for this article. Nestlé and Lotus Bakeries did not respond.
Challenge for manufacturers
Steve Osborn, the co-founder of Aurora Ceres Partnership, a UK-based better-for-you advisory for the food and drinks industry, says “reducing sugar without losing customers is the number one challenge when engaging in a sugar-reduction process”.
Sugar is also used as a bulking ingredient as well as a sweetener, contributing to the texture profile such as in chocolate, where it tends to mask bitterness. It is also a key component of flavour and colour development, Osborn explains, referring to the so-called Maillard reaction and caramelisation.
According to the International Journal of Food Science: “The Maillard reaction produces flavour and aroma during the cooking process; and it is used almost everywhere from the baking industry to our day-to-day life to make food tasty.”
Replacing the sweetness of sugar is the “easy part” with the addition of artificial sweeteners – the natural sweetener stevia or allulose monosaccharide, for instance – but “they do not replicate the full bodied, rounded sweetness that is an innate liking in humans”, Osborn says.
“This requires a blend of two or three to be used and they only replace the sweetness, not the volume, structure, mouthfeel, water activity control, or reactivity,” he explains.
Soluble fibres and polyols – sugar alcohols such as aspartame, sucralose, maltitol and xylitol – can be used to add volume but for some people they can cause gastrointestinal problems, he says.
“Removal of sugar by stealth or incrementally without the consumer noticing was never going to be successful, as was achieved with salt,” Osborn adds.
“In the early days of the sugar-reduction agenda, there was considerable misinformation that implied that reducing sugar would be easy – just like salt – but the functionality of sugar is much more wide-ranging and has much bigger implications.”
Beet alternatives
Rudy Wouters heads up Beneo’s technology center as part of Germany-based Südzucker group, one of the largest global producers of sugar.
He agrees with Osborn that sugar reformulation is not a straightforward task for manufacturers, especially for indulgent products where taste and texture are crucial.
Beneo offers a number of reformulation solutions to cut added sugar, what Wouters describes as “functional ingredients” based on plants, such as isomalt, a replacement derived from sugar beet, which he says is similar to sucrose but with half the calories.
It also supplies the fructooligosaccharide fibre sourced from beet sugar, the chicory root fibre trademark Orafti Inulin, and oligofructose. Wouters suggests those fibres have a “mild sweet taste” with technical properties similar to sugar.
“The producer needs to find a recipe that allows them to create an alternative that has a similar taste and texture to the original but uses less sugar,” he explains.
“Secondly, crucial technical characteristics that influence the food or beverage matrix need to be understood and producers need to realise that sugar replacement is about so much more than just ensuring sweetness.”
Osborn says “there will be a shift in time as some taste preferences change where sugar can be removed without detrimental impacts”.
That might be where education comes in, not for adults accustomed to indulgent cakes and sweets, but for their offspring.
“I have less faith in converting those who are well advanced as adults in their years [as opposed] to helping the children at a younger age eat healthier,” Cardello argues, with a caveat.
“You see several studies that show that if the parents struggle with overweight and obesity, it’s a higher probability that child will go in that direction. We don’t know enough about genetics yet, but certainly the eating habits contribute to that.”
Compromise for change
Wouters of Beneo, however, suggests there may be a compromise to be made on the part of consumers. But the key question would be whether they are willing to do so in giving up their favourite treats for an alternative that might not quite match.
“While these alternative ingredients can replace sugar cup by cup, they will behave differently to sugar when used in combination with other ingredients,” Wouters explains.
“With obesity such a prevalent condition across the globe, we don’t see these ingredient growth trends slowing anytime soon. Although sugar reformulation is a complex process, it is worth the effort for producers as demand for balanced, more natural taste profiles, using naturally sweet ingredients, rather than artificial sweeteners, looks set to continue for the foreseeable future.”
Reformulation around artificial sweeteners also has inherent challenges, mainly around regulation and safety, according to the CSPI, which suggests low- and no-calorie sweeteners (LNCS) are the likely route for manufacturers.
Such regulation is currently lacking as the food and drinks industry is not required to disclose the amount of LNCS in their products, CSPI says, adding: “Some LNCS have come to market through the ‘generally recognised as safe’ (GRAS) loophole without notification to FDA – lactitol and maltitol, for example, are in use but are not listed in FDA’s GRAS notice inventory.”
The FDA must therefore ensure disclosure as the use of alternative sweeteners becomes more widespread, and even more so if cutting added sugars through voluntary reformulation becomes a compulsory endeavour.
To achieve sugar-reduction goals, voluntary or otherwise, CSPI recommends the FDA should issue “guidance” for the food and drinks industry over the short- to-mid and long-term out to ten years.
For the time being, the CSPI says it hasn’t “seen movement on added sugar reduction targets”.
Progress could also be further hindered by the new Trump administration, which in February reportedly fired 1,000s of probationary staff at US federal health agencies such as the FDA, including at the latter’s Human Foods Program.
“It’s unclear whether the new administration will focus on added sugar reduction but given the widespread firings in the FDA Human Foods Program, the agency will have limited resources to work on these regulations moving forward,” CSPI says.
Cardello calls it a “state of flux” as the US food industry waits to see what measures Robert Kennedy, Jr. takes in his pledge to combat ultra-processed foods and to fight obesity. The new health secretary might just come out with an edict to cut sugar, salt, fat and calories, he warns.
Nevertheless, it will ultimately come down to the consumer in their acceptance of alternative, lower added sugar indulgence products in confectionery and sweet baked goods. They could also shun them altogether.
“There are other considerations in the formulation. What happens now when you’re making those substitutions, you have a somewhat different product, which may taste good, but it is a different product,” Cardello argues.
“I’m all for making products healthier, but I don’t think it’s an all or nothing proposition. We want to make people healthier but if they don’t like it, they won’t buy it.”
