Consumers ditch aspartame in favour of 'natural' sweeteners

Consumers’ taste for aspartame has soured, new data from Canadean shows. Overall, sugar and sweetener consumption is changing across the globe, with increasing positive sentiment towards all-natural sweetness and clean label products.

Stevia, sucralose, erythritol and acesulfame potassium are increasing in popularity as aspartame loses ground, Canadean says.

Aspartame is forecast to face negative growth rates between 0.1 to -1.7%; sucralose consumption, however, is expected to grow between 1.9 and 6.6% annually across most soft drinks categories. Canadean anticipates that standardised stevia sweetener consumption will grow 12.3% to an estimated volume sale of 8000 tonnes in 2018.

The mid-calorie segment has become a new mainstream market, Canadean says, with strong growth noted in soft drink products with reduced sugar and natural sweeteners in Western markets.

Canadean research found that honey is perceived to be the healthiest choice of sugars/sweeteners, followed by stevia and cane sugar. More women than men named stevia as the healthiest choice, suggesting that women are more up to date on the natural sweetener. In contrast, more men selected the non-caloric sucralose as the healthiest sweetener choice.

“At Canadean Ingredients, we believe that all-natural and less sugar is an important focus for the ingredient industry, as evidenced in our consumer sentiment studies. This is the case not just for soft drinks, but in all food and beverage categories,” said Karin Nielsen, director, Canadean Ingredients.

“The ingredient and food industry need to consider the current sweeteners’ marketing mix and how they present their products for this new important segment.”