Types of sweeteners and sugar substitutes, explained

Bowls of sugar, jaggery, honey and white powder on a kitchen counter beside a small plain dropper bottle

A sweetener is anything added to food or drink to make it sweet, and there are four types of sweeteners. Natural sweeteners cover sugars such as jaggery and honey, and plant extracts such as stevia and monk fruit; sugar alcohols such as erythritol are 25% to 100% as sweet as sugar; rare sugars such as allulose are sugars with fewer calories. Artificial sweeteners such as sucralose and aspartame are 200 to 600 times sweeter than sugar [1].

Key takeaways

  • Natural sweeteners: sugars such as jaggery, khand and honey, and plant extracts such as stevia and monk fruit.
  • Plant extracts: stevia is 200 to 400 times and monk fruit 100 to 250 times sweeter than sugar [1].
  • Glycemic index: sugar and honey are medium-GI at 65 and 61; the glucose in them is high-GI at 103 [2].
  • Sugar alcohols: 25% to 100% as sweet as sugar [1]; most of them count at 2.4 kcal per gram on an EU food label [3].
  • Artificial sweeteners: from about 200 times (aspartame) to about 20,000 times (advantame) sweeter than sugar [1].
On this page
  1. Natural sweeteners list: from gur to monk fruit
  2. Sugar alcohols and rare sugars: what fills the spoon
  3. Artificial sweeteners: hundreds of times sweeter than sugar
  4. Two other ways sweeteners are grouped
  5. How to tell which type is in your pack
  6. Types of sweeteners compared: sweetness, calories and GI
  7. Compare two sweeteners
  8. Sweetener safety, labels and myths
  9. Sweeteners and diabetes
  10. Sweeteners and weight loss
  11. Sweeteners for keto
  12. Sweeteners and PCOS
  13. Sweeteners in menopause
  14. Using sweeteners in chai, coffee and cooking
  15. Sweeteners and fatty liver
  16. Sweeteners and heart health
  17. Sweeteners and thyroid

Natural sweeteners list: from gur to monk fruit

Open the sugar dabba at home and cheeni is often only the start. There is gur for the winter chai, a jar of shahad someone bought for its "health", maybe a box of mishri kept for prasad.

Ask what is a natural sweetener and the short answer is anything sweet that comes from plants or bees, so all of these count. The honest question is whether moving from one to another changes anything except the taste.

It depends which of the two types of natural sweeteners you pick up. One is sugar, calories included; the other is a plant extract so sweet that a pinch does the work of a spoon.

The label shows the gap. Sugars carry about 4 kcal per gram, whichever plant or hive they come from, while the extracts add almost nothing [3] [4].

Sugars and traditional sweeteners: cheeni, gur, khand and shahad

White sugar (cheeni), jaggery (gur), khand, mishri, honey (shahad), coconut sugar, dates and date syrup, maple syrup and agave all belong here. They taste different and they are made differently. Each one is still a sugar, so the calorie count above applies to all of them [3].

So the gur you stir into winter chai sweetens the cup with sugar, the same as cheeni would. The caramel note is real; the sugar is the same.

Gur goes into chai and chikki, khand into mithai, mishri into prasad. Not one of them is a low-calorie swap, however the pack is sold.

A glass of milky chai on a steel saucer beside jaggery pieces on a brass plate and a small bowl of sugar crystals

Chai with gur or with white sugar is still chai with sugar.

GI and GL, explained with a cup of chai

Here's the catch, and it matters most if someone at home has diabetes. Two foods with the same calories can move blood glucose very differently. The glycemic index (GI) ranks how much and how fast a food raises blood glucose over a set time after eating, against pure glucose set at 100 [5].

The GI tables we used list, in their summary table, glucose at 103, table sugar (sucrose) at 65, honey at 61, and fructose, one of the sugars in fruit, at 15. On that scale 55 or less counts as low and 70 or more as high [2].

So sugar and honey are medium-GI foods, and the glucose in them is high-GI. Honey is not the gentler choice; it sits four points below cheeni.

Gur is not among the foods in that summary table, and we found no published GI value for jaggery on its own [2]. Until someone measures it, count it as a sugar.

GI tells you about the food. Glycemic load (GL) adds how much you ate: GI times the grams of available carbohydrate in the serving, divided by 100 [2].

One spoon of sugar in a cup of chai is a medium GI with a small load. A plate of mithai sweetened with the same sugar carries a far bigger load.

In short: gur, khand and shahad are sugars with their own flavours, not low-calorie swaps. Sugar and honey are medium-GI, the glucose in them is high-GI, and the portion decides the load.

Plant extracts with almost no calories: stevia and monk fruit

The other kind of natural sweetener is the small bottle or jar beside the kettle, the one that asks for drops or a pinch. Stevia is the everyday name for steviol glycosides, taken from the leaves of Stevia rebaudiana.

They are 200 to 400 times as sweet as table sugar [1]. So a few drops do the work of a spoon, with almost nothing to count.

Stevia's catch is taste. Human taste tests run alongside cell assays found that steviol glycosides switch on two human bitter-taste receptors, hTAS2R4 and hTAS2R14, as well as the sweet receptor [6]. That is the bitter aftertaste many people notice.

The same study saw some glycosides, stevioside among them, taste less sweet past a certain concentration [6]. So adding more stevia does not fix the bitterness; it can make the cup taste worse.

Monk fruit (Siraitia grosvenorii, also called luo han guo) gets its sweetness from mogrosides. Its extract is 100 to 250 times as sweet as sugar, depending on the mogroside content [1].

In the kitchen the difference shows up in the pan. Monk fruit extract is heat stable and can go into baking and cooking, so it survives a kheer that simmers on the stove [4]. Many drops and powders sold for chai and coffee are built on one of these two extracts, and the ingredient list tells you which.

In short: stevia and monk fruit sweeten by the drop and add almost nothing. Stevia can leave a bitter note; monk fruit takes the heat of a pan.

Sugar alcohols and rare sugars: what fills the spoon

You bought the pack because the front said monk fruit. At home it measures spoon for spoon like sugar, and that should make you curious, because a pinch of extract cannot fill a spoon.

Something else does. Very often that something is a sugar alcohol, and on many "stevia" and "monk fruit" packs it is the first ingredient.

Sugar alcohols and rare sugars sit between sugar and the plant extracts. Spoon for spoon they taste close to sugar, with fewer calories, which is exactly what makes them useful as bulk. They deserve a closer look than the front of the pack gives them.

Sugar alcohols (polyols): erythritol, xylitol and the rest

A sugar alcohol, or polyol, is a carbohydrate whose structure looks partly like a sugar and partly like an alcohol. It is not drinking alcohol. Erythritol, xylitol, sorbitol, maltitol, mannitol and isomalt are the common ones, and they are 25% to 100% as sweet as sugar [1].

That modest sweetness is the point. A plant extract alone would fill a pack with a pinch; a sugar alcohol gives you something to measure by the spoon, with a texture close to sugar.

On a European label polyols count at 2.4 kcal per gram and erythritol at 0, against 4 for sugar [3]. You meet them in sugar-free chewing gum and sugar-free sweets as well as in those blends [1].

On blood glucose they are gentle and do not cause a sudden rise [1]. Erythritol and mannitol have a GI of 0, lactitol 6, sorbitol and isomalt 9, xylitol 13 and maltitol 35, all below table sugar [5]. Maltitol is the one to notice on a label.

Bar chart of glycemic index: glucose 103, sucrose 65, honey 61, fructose 15, maltitol 35, xylitol 13, sorbitol 9, erythritol 0

The erythritol studies, and what the FDA says

In 2023 a Cleveland Clinic team published a study in Nature Medicine that sent many people back to reading labels. They measured blood erythritol in 1,157 people undergoing cardiac risk assessment, then in 2,149 US and 833 European patients having elective cardiac evaluation [7].

Higher levels went with a higher three-year risk of death, heart attack or stroke. In the two validation groups, the quarter with the most erythritol in their blood had 1.8 and 2.2 times the risk of the lowest quarter after adjustment [7].

In 2024 the same group gave 10 healthy volunteers 30 g of erythritol: blood erythritol rose more than 1,000-fold and their platelets clumped more readily when stimulated. Thirty grams of glucose did neither [8].

These studies show a link, not proof. The people in the 2023 study were already under cardiac evaluation, which limits what it says about everyone else.

The FDA reviewed the 2023 paper and determined that the observational studies did not establish a causal link, and says it will keep monitoring new information [1]. But if a sweetener is going into your cup every single day, it is fair to want to know it is there.

If you have a heart condition or diabetes, talk to your doctor before changing how you sweeten food.

In short: sugar alcohols fill the spoon with fewer calories and a low GI. Erythritol has open questions from two studies that found a link, not proof. Read the first ingredient.

At The Sweet Change: our powder is made with monk fruit, guar fibre and allulose, with no erythritol. We chose that blend after the 2023 and 2024 erythritol studies [7] [8], which found a link, not proof, and the US FDA has said the observational studies behind the 2023 paper did not establish a causal link [1]. The full ingredient list is on Monk Fruit Sweetener without Erythritol.

Rare sugars: allulose and tagatose

Allulose is the odd one out: a real sugar by chemistry, with most of the calories missing. It is a simple sugar (a monosaccharide) found in small amounts in some foods, and on a US label it counts at 0.4 kcal per gram, a tenth of sugar's figure [9].

Tagatose is the other rare sugar you may meet.

Rare sugars meet the chemical definition of a sugar but are metabolised, or used by the body, differently from sugars such as sucrose [1]. In the kitchen you measure allulose by the spoon, a little more generously than sugar, since it is reported at about 70% of sugar's sweetness [9].

Neither GI source used on this page lists allulose or tagatose in the tables we read [2] [5], so the table at the end says "not given" rather than guessing.

Artificial sweeteners: hundreds of times sweeter than sugar

The office chai round comes at 4 pm whether you planned for it or not, and someone always drops a tiny tablet into their cup from a box in the drawer. That tablet is usually an artificial sweetener: made in a lab, and hundreds to thousands of times sweeter than sugar, so a food needs only a trace.

Here is how much sweeter each one is than table sugar [1]:

  • Aspartame: about 200 times
  • Acesulfame potassium (ace-K): about 200 times
  • Saccharin: 200 to 700 times
  • Sucralose: about 600 times
  • Neotame: 7,000 to 13,000 times
  • Advantame: about 20,000 times

Those multiples are why a tablet the size of a lentil sweetens a whole cup. One working yardstick takes a sweetener packet as the match for two teaspoons, about 8 g, of sugar [1]. At that dose they add no carbohydrate worth counting.

Heat sorts them in the kitchen. Aspartame is not heat stable and loses its sweetness when heated, so it is typically not used in baked goods [1]. A tablet that suits your chai may fail you in a halwa on the stove, and the box rarely says so.

Tabletop "sugar-free" tablets, diet colas and many sugar-free sweets use one or two of these. The ingredient list names which one a pack uses, so the box tells you before the taste does. Every name and its sweetness: our ingredient library.

Two other ways sweeteners are grouped

The four types above are sorted by what each sweetener is made of. That is the sorting a label follows, and the one this page uses.

Two other groupings turn up in reading, and they explain why one product can be a "sugar substitute" in one place and a "non-nutritive sweetener" in another.

First, the word itself: what is a sugar substitute? Anything used in place of sugar for sweetness, which strictly means every type except the sugars, though gur and honey are sold as substitutes too.

So the types of sugar substitutes are the plant extracts, the sugar alcohols, the rare sugars and the artificial sweeteners, with the sugars as the thing being replaced.

Nutritive and non-nutritive

This grouping sorts sugar substitutes by calories. Non-nutritive ones give none or almost none: stevia, monk fruit, sucralose and saccharin, for example [4]. The sugars and sugar alcohols they replace are the nutritive side, and they carry calories [3].

Aspartame is the odd one out: it has calories, so it counts as nutritive, but so little is needed that they hardly register [4].

The WHO's "non-sugar sweeteners"

The WHO's 2023 guideline uses one bucket, "non-sugar sweeteners", for acesulfame K, aspartame, advantame, cyclamates, neotame, saccharin, sucralose, stevia and stevia derivatives. It leaves out low-calorie sugars and sugar alcohols, which it treats as sugars or sugar derivatives with calories [10].

Its advice on that bucket is conditional: do not use non-sugar sweeteners to control body weight or to lower the risk of noncommunicable diseases, since the review behind it suggests no long-term benefit in reducing body fat in adults or children, and the evidence may be confounded by how people use them [10].

The one group that advice leaves out is people who already have diabetes [10].

That matters the next time a headline says "sweeteners" did something in a study. Check which bucket the study used before you decide it applies to your pack. Our weight guide goes through what that advice means when you are trying to lose weight.

How to tell which type is in your pack

Here is the four-second habit that settles the argument. Turn the pack over. The ingredient list names the sweetener, and the first ingredient is the one there is most of [3].

Drawn pack front reading monk fruit sweetener beside a back label that lists erythritol first and monk fruit extract second

A pack that says "monk fruit" or "stevia" on the front often lists a sugar alcohol or a sugar first and the extract near the end, because the extract is so sweet that only a little is needed. Blends are common, so read the whole list, not the first word.

Sweetener kharidne se pehle ingredient label padho. Har baar.

Types of sweeteners compared: sweetness, calories and GI

Everything above, in one place. This sweeteners list puts the sweetener types side by side, with the common sweetener names under each, how sweet each is against sugar, calories, and the glycemic index where a published table gives one.

Sugar is the reference, so it reads as 1. It doubles as a sugar substitutes list, since every row after the first stands in for sugar in some way.

The full sweeteners list by type (scroll sideways on a phone)

Type Examples, with Indian names How sweet vs sugar Calories Glycemic index (glucose = 100) Where you meet it in India
Sugars and traditional sweeteners white sugar (cheeni), jaggery (gur), khand, mishri, honey (shahad), coconut sugar, dates about the same (sugar = 1) 4 kcal/g as carbohydrate [3] glucose 103, sucrose 65, honey 61, fructose 15 [2]; jaggery not given chai, mithai, prasad, chikki
Plant extracts stevia (steviol glycosides), monk fruit (luo han guo) stevia 200 to 400 times; monk fruit 100 to 250 times [1] almost none at the amounts used [4] not given drops and powders for chai and coffee
Sugar alcohols (polyols) erythritol, xylitol, sorbitol, maltitol 25% to 100% as sweet [1] 2.4 kcal/g; erythritol 0 [3] erythritol 0, sorbitol 9, xylitol 13, maltitol 35 [5] sugar-free sweets, chewing gum, many monk fruit blends
Rare sugars allulose, tagatose allulose about 70% (reported, see note) [9]*; tagatose not given allulose 0.4 kcal/g on US labels [9] not given newer powders and baking blends
Artificial (high-intensity) aspartame, acesulfame K, saccharin, sucralose, neotame, advantame 200 to 20,000 times [1] none or almost none at the amounts used [4] not given tabletop tablets, diet colas, sugar-free sweets
Blends a plant extract with a sugar alcohol or a sugar depends on the mix depends on the mix depends on the mix many "monk fruit" and "stevia" packs

Numbers in brackets point to the Sources list at the end of the page. The guide for each type is linked in its section above.

* The 70% figure for allulose comes from comments quoted in a 2020 US labelling guidance, not from a measurement of the regulator's own, and none of the sources here gives a figure for tagatose [9].

Chart of how sweet each type of sweetener is compared with sugar, from sugar alcohols up to advantame at about 20,000 times

What our buyers were switching from

From our survey of our own buyers: of those who told us what they sweetened with before, 39% said regular sugar, 19% another monk fruit brand, 16% jaggery or honey, 12% stevia and 9% sugar-free tablets or sachets; 6% had given up sweet things altogether.

Of those who told us where the sweetener goes, 66% said coffee, 64% chai, 34% milk, shakes or smoothies, 28% nimbu pani and cold drinks, 15% baking and 14% Indian sweets. Set against the table, 54% were moving away from the first row: sugar, jaggery or honey.

So the different types of sweeteners are not interchangeable, and that is the useful part. The sugars bring flavour with their calories, the extracts bring sweetness by the drop, and the sugar alcohols and rare sugars fill the spoon. Which one belongs in your cup depends on what is cooking and on who is drinking it.

The guides below take the different types of sugar substitutes one topic at a time: comparing two sweeteners, safety and labels, diabetes, weight, and using them in chai and cooking. For a ranked list, see our roundup of sugar substitutes; this page is the sweetener guide they all start from.

Cheat sheet

  • Turn the pack over: the first ingredient is the one there is most of, and "monk fruit" on the front often means a sugar alcohol or a sugar first on the back.
  • Gur, khand and shahad: sugars with their own flavours, counted at 4 kcal per gram of carbohydrate [3]; swap them for taste, not for calories.
  • Stevia and monk fruit: sweeten by the drop; stevia can leave a bitter note [6], and monk fruit extract takes heat [4].
  • Sugar alcohols: fill the spoon with a low GI [5]; erythritol has open questions from two studies, and the FDA found the 2023 study's observational evidence short of cause [1].
  • Heart condition or diabetes: talk to your doctor before changing how you sweeten food.

Compare two sweeteners

Side-by-side guides to the pairs people compare most: monk fruit and stevia, jaggery and sugar, natural and artificial, each with a table of sweetness, calories and cost per cup.

You are in the aisle with two packs, or at the kitchen table with two browser tabs, and the question is simple: which one. Comparing two sweeteners comes down to four things: how sweet each is against sugar, what it adds in calories, how it behaves in heat, and what it costs per cup.

Three of those four are already on this page: the extracts sweeten by the drop where sugar alcohols measure by the spoon, calories run from sugar's full count down to erythritol's nothing, and aspartame fails in heat where monk fruit extract holds [1] [3] [4].

So jaggery against sugar is two sugars with different flavours, and monk fruit against stevia two extracts where taste and price decide. Each comparison guide puts its pair in one table, same units, so you can settle it in a minute.

Sweetener safety, labels and myths

What regulators and studies say about each type, how to read a sweetener label, and the myths that keep coming back.

The headline says one sweetener is linked to something, and by evening someone has forwarded it to the family WhatsApp group. In the United States, sweeteners authorised as food additives are judged safe for the general population under set conditions of use, and each carries an acceptable daily intake [1].

The FDA lists six as food additives and has evaluated GRAS (generally recognised as safe) notices for high-purity steviol glycosides and for monk fruit extract without questioning them [1].

The WHO's 2023 guideline, set out in the grouping section above, is a different kind of statement: it sets no safe limit, and asks instead whether swapping sugar for a sweetener brings a lasting benefit [10].

The two sit side by side rather than in conflict, and safety questions differ by sweetener, so our guides take them one at a time. Reading the ingredient list settles the first question, which is what is in the pack.

Sweeteners and diabetes

What diabetes guidelines say about sugar substitutes, and how each type of sweetener fits into a diabetes meal plan.

If someone at home has diabetes, the first question about any sweetener is a blunt one: is it a sugar. By the label test above, jaggery, khand and honey are sugars, while stevia, monk fruit, sucralose and the other high-intensity sweeteners are not [3].

Used in place of sugar, sugar substitutes may help with blood sugar control in people with diabetes [4]. Sugar alcohols sit in between, gentle on blood glucose as the polyol section explains [1]. And the one group the 2023 WHO weight advice leaves out is people who already have diabetes [10].

So the type decides, and our diabetes guides go through each one with what the guidelines and studies say. If you have diabetes, check any change in how you sweeten food with your doctor or dietitian.

Sweeteners and weight loss

What the evidence and WHO's 2023 guideline say about sweeteners when you are trying to lose weight.

You're doing the work: the early alarm for the gym, 10,000 steps on the watch, dal and roti instead of the 4 pm samosa, and then the office chai arrives with two spoons of sugar and quietly takes back a little of the day. So will swapping that sugar for a sweetener help you lose weight?

Here the honest answer matters more than the hopeful one. The WHO looked at the evidence in 2023 and advised against using sweeteners as a weight-loss tool, as the grouping section above sets out [10].

The case for a sweetener is a modest one: it gives sweetness without many calories, which may help someone trying to lose weight [4].

What a sweetener can do is smaller than the hopeful headlines, and still worth having: if it is the taste of sweet you miss, it keeps your chai and kheer sweet while the sugar spoon stays in the dabba.

Talk to your doctor or dietitian before you change how you sweeten food as part of a weight plan.

Sweeteners for keto

Which types of sweeteners have no net carbs, and which ones quietly add them.

Keto puts carbohydrate under a hard ceiling, so the question about any sweetener stops being taste and becomes grams. Sugars, jaggery and honey among them, carry sugar's full calories; on an EU label most polyols carry fewer and erythritol none [3].

Allulose counts at a tenth of sugar's calories on a US label [9]. Sugar alcohols are also gentle on blood glucose, which the polyol section covers [1].

Stevia, monk fruit and the artificial sweeteners add almost nothing, but a blend often lists a sugar alcohol or a sugar first, so the ingredient list decides what the sweetener on a keto plan really adds [4].

Check with a doctor or dietitian before starting a ketogenic diet, and more so if you have diabetes.

Sweeteners and PCOS

What PCOS diet guidance says about sugar and its substitutes.

If you have PCOS, you have probably been told to "cut sugar" more times than anyone has explained why. Part of the reason is insulin: many women with PCOS have insulin resistance, where the body's cells do not respond normally to insulin and blood insulin runs higher than normal [11].

Losing weight can improve both insulin and cholesterol levels in women with PCOS [12].

The label test above sorts the sweeteners the same way here: jaggery and honey are sugars with sugar's calories, while stevia, monk fruit and the artificial sweeteners add almost nothing [3] [4].

And the WHO's 2023 advice above applies here too, so a sweetener is a swap for the spoon, not a plan on its own [10].

PCOS diet guidance is about the whole plate, and our PCOS guide reads it that way. Talk to your doctor or dietitian about where sweeteners fit in your PCOS plan.

Sweeteners in menopause

Sugar, sweeteners and the diet changes many women make around menopause.

Around menopause many women rethink what they eat, and with reason: eating well through perimenopause and menopause can help with symptoms, and the advice is a healthy, balanced diet with calcium-rich foods [13].

The WHO caps free sugars at under 10% of daily energy for adults, about 50 g or 12 level teaspoons a day for an adult eating about 2,000 kcal, and counts a healthy diet among the protections against noncommunicable diseases such as diabetes and heart disease [14].

Where a sweetener replaces sugar, its type decides what changes: sugars such as gur and honey keep the calories, while plant extracts and artificial sweeteners drop almost all of them [1] [4]. The 2023 guideline above holds here too, so think of the swap as keeping the chai sweet, not as a weight plan [10].

Our menopause guide covers sugar, sweeteners and the diet changes many women make in these years. Check with your doctor or dietitian, especially if you are on hormone therapy or have a bone-health plan.

Using sweeteners in chai, coffee and cooking

How much to use, what dissolves in hot chai, and which types survive baking and mithai.

The recipe says two tablespoons of sugar, your pack says drops, and nobody has told you how much goes in or whether it survives the stove. How a sweetener behaves in a hot cup or a hot pan depends on its type.

Aspartame fails in heat and monk fruit extract takes it, as the type sections above say; most sugar substitutes can be used during cooking and baking [1] [4].

Sweetness sets the dose: the extracts are hundreds of times sweeter than sugar, so a spoon of sugar becomes a few drops or a pinch [1].

Sugar alcohols sit much closer to sugar in sweetness, so they are measured spoon for spoon rather than by the drop [1]. Our use guides give the amounts for chai, coffee, kheer and halwa.

Sweeteners and fatty liver

What fatty liver guidance says about sugar, fructose and sweeteners.

A fatty liver diagnosis usually arrives with a list of foods to go easy on, and sugar is near the top of it. Your doctor may suggest avoiding foods and drinks with large amounts of simple sugars, especially fructose: sweetened soft drinks, sports drinks, sweetened tea and juices [15].

Table sugar (sucrose) is rapidly changed to glucose and fructose during digestion, so it is a major source of fructose [15].

Jaggery, honey and the other traditional sweeteners are sugars too, so the label figures and the free-sugar cap above apply to them [3] [14].

Non-sugar sweeteners add almost nothing, but the 2023 WHO advice still stands, so a sweetener changes the spoon and not the diagnosis [4] [10]. Check with your doctor or dietitian before changing your diet for fatty liver.

Sweeteners and heart health

What heart-health guidance says about added sugar and its substitutes.

The cardiologist says "watch the sugar", and the first thing you picture is the mithai box, not the three cups of chai a day. An unhealthy diet, with excess salt, sugar and fats, is one of the risk factors behind most preventable cardiovascular disease [16].

The free-sugar cap set out above is the number to keep in mind [14].

Every sugar on the natural list, from cheeni to gur and shahad, counts towards that cap. And the same 2023 advice covers disease risk as well as weight: a sweetener is not something to lean on to lower that risk [10].

So a sweetener keeps the chai sweet without the spoons; it is not a heart plan. Talk to your doctor before changing your diet if you have a heart condition.

Sweeteners and thyroid

Sugar and sweetener questions people ask on a thyroid diet.

A thyroid diagnosis sends many people to the internet for a diet, and many of the questions they bring back are about sugar and weight. One official patient guide on hypothyroidism covers causes, tests, treatment and diet, and says nothing about sweeteners [17]. So the general advice applies, starting with the free-sugar cap above [14].

The same label test applies: jaggery and honey are sugars; stevia, monk fruit and the artificial sweeteners add almost nothing [3] [4].

The 2023 weight advice applies here as well, so the swap keeps the sweet and leaves the weight question where it was [10]. Our thyroid guide answers the sugar and sweetener questions people bring to a thyroid diet. Check with your doctor or dietitian before changing your diet for a thyroid condition.

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Questions people ask

How many types of sweeteners are there?

Four, if you sort them by what they are made of: natural sweeteners (sugars such as gur and honey, plus plant extracts such as stevia and monk fruit), sugar alcohols, rare sugars such as allulose, and artificial sweeteners. Sort the same kinds of sweetener by calories instead, as US MedlinePlus does, and you get two groups, nutritive and non-nutritive.

What are sweetening agents?

Sweetening agents is the textbook term for anything added to food or drink to make it sweet, so it covers sugar and its substitutes. The types of sweetening agents are the same four: natural sweeteners (sugars such as jaggery, plant extracts such as stevia), sugar alcohols such as erythritol, rare sugars such as allulose, and artificial sweeteners such as sucralose.

What type of sweetener are sugar-free tablets?

Most tabletop "sugar-free" tablets are artificial sweeteners. By the US FDA's figures, the common ones are sucralose, about 600 times sweeter than sugar, aspartame, about 200 times, and saccharin, 200 to 700 times. The box names the one it uses, usually on the back, so turn it over before you buy.

Are jaggery, khand and honey sugar substitutes?

They replace white sugar in a recipe, but they are sugars themselves. EU labelling rules count the carbohydrate in them at 4 kcal per gram, as for sugar. So they count as natural sweeteners, not as low-calorie ones; for sweetness with fewer calories, look at the plant extracts, sugar alcohols or rare sugars instead.

What are the types of sugar-free sweeteners?

Sweeteners that add no sugar fall into three groups: plant extracts such as stevia and monk fruit, artificial sweeteners such as sucralose and aspartame, and sugar alcohols such as erythritol and xylitol. Most sugar alcohols still carry some calories under EU labelling rules. We leave allulose off this list because it is a sugar by chemistry, with fewer calories.

Sweetener kya hota hai?

A sweetener is anything added to food or drink to make it taste sweet. That covers sugar itself and everything used in its place: jaggery and honey, plant extracts such as stevia and monk fruit, sugar alcohols such as erythritol, rare sugars such as allulose, and artificial sweeteners such as sucralose. The ingredient list names which one a pack uses.

Monk Fruit Drops (100 servings)Monk Fruit Drops (100 servings) Rs. 497.00 Monk Fruit Drops (200 servings)Monk Fruit Drops (200 servings) Rs. 971.00 Monk Fruit Powder No Erythritol (100 servings)Monk Fruit Powder No Erythritol (100 servings) Rs. 675.00 Monk Fruit Powder No Erythritol (300 servings)Monk Fruit Powder No Erythritol (300 servings) Rs. 1,493.00
Kapil Groverr

Written by
Kapil Groverr · Chief Business Officer and Co-Founder

IIM Lucknow alumnus · 18 years in marketing

Kapil Groverr is Co-Founder and Chief Business Officer of The Sweet Change, where he leads growth and marketing. He has 18 years in marketing, most recently as Vice President Marketing at Breathe Well-being and before that Head of Digital Marketing at King Koil. An IIM Lucknow alumnus, he writes our sweetener guides and comparisons.

Writes about: Sweetener guides and comparisons

Disclosure: Co-founder of The Sweet Change

Manvi Agnihotri

Nutrition reviewed by
Manvi Agnihotri · CEO and Co-Founder

12 years in clinical nutrition, over 11,000 patients · M.Sc Food and Nutrition, silver medallist

Manvi Agnihotri is CEO and Co-Founder of The Sweet Change. She holds an M.Sc in Food and Nutrition, in which she was a silver medallist, and has led brand strategy and patient and doctor education at Breathe Well-being, a diabetes care programme. She reviews our health and nutrition pages before they go live.

Reviews: Nutrition and food science, Blood sugar and diabetes diet

Disclosure: Co-founder of The Sweet Change

Sources

  1. US Food and Drug Administration, 2025. "Aspartame and Other Sweeteners in Food", content current as of 27 February 2025. FDA.gov. https://www.fda.gov/food/food-additives-petitions/aspartame-and-other-sweeteners-food
  2. Atkinson FS, Foster-Powell K, Brand-Miller JC, 2008. "International Tables of Glycemic Index and Glycemic Load Values: 2008". Diabetes Care 31(12): 2281-2283. https://doi.org/10.2337/dc08-1239 (PMC2584181)
  3. European Parliament and Council, 2011. Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 on the provision of food information to consumers, Annex XIV (conversion factors). Official Journal of the European Union. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32011R1169
  4. MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia, US National Library of Medicine, 2025. "Sweeteners - sugar substitutes", reviewed 3 July 2025. https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/007492.htm
  5. Livesey G, 2003. "Health potential of polyols as sugar replacers, with emphasis on low glycaemic properties". Nutrition Research Reviews 16(2): 163-191. https://doi.org/10.1079/NRR200371 (PubMed 19087388)
  6. Hellfritsch C, Brockhoff A, Stähler F, Meyerhof W, Hofmann T, 2012. "Human psychometric and taste receptor responses to steviol glycosides". Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 60(27): 6782-6793. https://doi.org/10.1021/jf301297n (PubMed 22616809)
  7. Witkowski M, Nemet I, Alamri H, et al., 2023. "The artificial sweetener erythritol and cardiovascular event risk". Nature Medicine 29(3): 710-718. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-023-02223-9 (PubMed 36849732; PMC10334259)
  8. Witkowski M, Wilcox J, Province V, et al., 2024. "Ingestion of the Non-Nutritive Sweetener Erythritol, but Not Glucose, Enhances Platelet Reactivity and Thrombosis Potential in Healthy Volunteers: Brief Report". Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology 44(9): 2136-2141. https://doi.org/10.1161/ATVBAHA.124.321019 (PMC11338701)
  9. US Food and Drug Administration, 2020. "The Declaration of Allulose and Calories from Allulose on Nutrition and Supplement Facts Labels: Guidance for Industry", October 2020 (PDF). FDA.gov. https://www.fda.gov/media/123342/download
  10. World Health Organization, 2023. "WHO advises not to use non-sugar sweeteners for weight control in newly released guideline", news release, 15 May 2023. WHO. https://www.who.int/news/item/15-05-2023-who-advises-not-to-use-non-sugar-sweeteners-for-weight-control-in-newly-released-guideline
  11. US Department of Health and Human Services, Office on Women's Health. "Polycystic ovary syndrome", accessed 10 October 2026. https://womenshealth.gov/a-z-topics/polycystic-ovary-syndrome
  12. US National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). "What are the treatments for PCOS?", accessed 10 October 2026. https://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/pcos/conditioninfo/treatments
  13. NHS. "Menopause: things you can do", accessed 10 October 2026. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/menopause/things-you-can-do/
  14. World Health Organization. "Healthy diet", fact sheet (free sugars under 10% of energy; 50 g or about 12 level teaspoons), accessed 10 October 2026. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/healthy-diet
  15. US National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), 2021. "Eating, Diet, & Nutrition for NAFLD & NASH", reviewed April 2021. https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/liver-disease/nafld-nash/eating-diet-nutrition
  16. World Health Organization. "Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs)", fact sheet, accessed 10 October 2026. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/cardiovascular-diseases-(cvds)
  17. US National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK). "Hypothyroidism (Underactive Thyroid)", accessed 10 October 2026. https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/endocrine-diseases/hypothyroidism

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