Did you know
Sugar is doing four jobs. Sweetness is only one of them
This is why reduced-sugar reformulation is hard. Take the sugar out and you have not just removed sweetness — you have removed body, softened bitterness, and changed how the flavour is released.
Sweetener replaces one of sugar's jobs. Sugar was doing at least four.
It sweetens. The obvious one, and the only one a high-intensity sweetener does well — though rarely with the same time course. Many sweeteners arrive later and linger longer than sucrose, which is read as "artificial" long before anyone can say why.
It provides body. Sugar is bulk. In a soft drink it is a meaningful share of the dissolved solids, and it gives the liquid a weight and a viscosity you notice immediately when it is gone. Remove it and the drink feels watery, no matter how sweet it is.
It masks bitterness and acidity. Sugar rounds off the hard edges of an acid system and covers bitter notes from fruit solids, botanicals or the sweetener itself. Take it away and you expose everything it was hiding, including flaws that were always there.
It changes flavour release. Sugar concentration affects how volatile compounds partition out of the liquid. Change the sugar and you change the timing and intensity of the aroma, even with the flavour dose untouched.
What reformulation actually involves
You are not swapping one ingredient for another. You are rebuilding a system so that the result is still recognisably the product people already buy — the mouthfeel, the acid balance, the bitterness masking and the flavour release all have to be put back by other means.
Our sugar reduction work is aimed squarely at that gap: closing the hole that is left after the sweetness has been replaced. It is also why a reduced-sugar brief needs the original product on the bench, not just its specification.
Bring us the brief behind the question.
We make liquid flavourants, emulsions and fragrances to order, in Benoni, for six industries.
Talk to our flavourists