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Sugar, Sugars and Sweeteners - A Guide to Understanding The Difference Between Them
There are now dozens of sweeteners on the market or listed in the ingredients of food and drink; and with each one itself potentially having many different names, it can be a minefield to unravel the definitions and understand the implications for our health. There are some important categories and definitions to understand if we are to successfully negotiate this minefield.
Sugars vs. Sweeteners
Sugars are carbohydrates that have particular molecular characteristics - there are many varieties and they have widely differing properties (In fact, strictly speaking all carbohydrates are sugars, but we do not need to worry about that here.) Sweetener is a more general term, referring to any substance that can be used to make something taste sweeter. This includes some sugars - for example, glucose. Other sweeteners, such as Aspartame, are not sugars.

Sugar the Nickname vs. Sugar the Category
This can be confusing for newcomers to the topic and is the most important to get straight from the start. As mentioned above, there are many kinds of sugar. However, when people talk about 'Sugar', especially in the context of food, they are often referring to Sucrose, one particular sugar. Certainly when you see the word in the list of ingredients for a product, this is what it means. Sucrose has acquired the nickname 'Sugar' over the years because it is the most commonly used sugar. It has acquired many other names too, but this is the most common.
A good illustration of this is a dried fruit like figs. You will not see the word Sugar in the ingredients list of a packet of dried figs - yet in the nutritional breakdown it might say Carbohydrate, of which sugars - 65g. This is because whilst there is no sucrose in the figs, there is naturally occurring fructose and glucose - which are themselves sugars.
Artificial vs. Natural
The term natural sweeteners is typically understood to mean substances that can already be found in plants or animals, unlike artificial sweeteners, which cannot. However, natural sweeteners often only occur in very small amounts in nature and undergo much processing before they find their way into our foods.
For example, fructose is a natural sweetener - it is responsible for some or all of the sweetness in most fruits. Yet it is also found in high fructose corn syrup, a highly processed sweetener derived from corn. Likewise, Tagatose is found in small amounts in dairy products, but used as a sweetener in concentrated form.
Acesulfame potassium (also known as Acesulfame K, Sunett, Sweet One or E950) is an artificial sweetener, often found in canned drinks marketed as being sugar free. It was formulated by a German chemical company and is not found in plants or animals.
Nutritive vs. Non-nutritive Sweeteners
The definition of nutritive sweeteners is that they have calories, whereas non-nutritive sweeteners do not. This is broad distinction and not always clear cut, so it should not be taken as a guide to whether a sweetener is the right choice, because within these categories there are wide variations.
Nutritive Sweeteners
There are two families of nutritive sweeteners - sugars and sugar alcohols.
Sugars - this family of sweeteners is commonly found in (and extracted from) naturally sweet foods; as such they are also classed as natural sugars. Their names usually end with -ose; for example, Sucrose, Glucose and Fructose. Glucose is found in many fruits and along with fructose is responsible for their sweet taste. Sugars tend to be the highest calorie sweeteners and some of them have been implicated in causing or exacerbating health problems such as tooth decay, heart disease, obesity and diabetes.
Sugar Alcohols - this family of sweeteners have names that end in -ol; for example, Sorbitol and Xylitol. Sugar alcohols are classed as natural sugars - Xylitol, for example, is found in some fruits and vegetables as well as in the bark of the Birch tree. Most sugar alcohols have fewer calories than sugars because they only partially digest. This can have intestinal implications and common side-effects of over consumption include diarrhoea and flatulence. However, their low impact on blood sugar, reduced calories and the fact they do not cause tooth decay makes them a widely-used substitute for sugars.
An example of how these categories can blur is the sugar alcohol Erythritol. It does not get absorbed by the gut at all and therefore has no calories - yet as a sugar alcohol it is classed as a nutritive sweetener.
Non-Nutritive Sweeteners
For the most part, non-nutritive sweeteners are artificial sweeteners. Examples are Aspartame (Phenylalinine), Saccharin and Sucralose. The reasons why a non-nutritive sweetener might not provide calories include:

It does not digest, but passes through unchanged - for example Saccharin
It digests, but has no calorific value - for example sucralose
It does digest and does have calories, but is so sweet that the amounts required to sweeten a product are tiny - for example Neotmame, which is 10,000 times sweeter than sucrose.

Non-nutritive sweeteners are typically found in products marketed as sugar free. In some cases (for example, Aspartame) there have been studies that suggest large quantities can be harmful when fed to rats.
One non-nutritive sweetener that is not artificial is Rebaudioside A (Stevia). Stevia is a non-nutritive sweetener because it is not metabolised by the body, but it is also a natural sweetener, since it can be found in the South American stevia plant.
For a definitive list of sweeteners and their alternative names, an extended version of this article can be found here:
The Definitive List of Sweeteners.
Methuselah is the author of Pay Now Live Later, a website taking an objective look at health, fitness and nutrition, what we can do to improve our lives and asking questions about big business and regulation.

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