Sugar reduction is a top-of-mind topic for both US consumers and food and beverage companies.
At Innova Market Insights, we’ve seen tremendous consumer attitude shifts involving sugar. It may be a sweet topic but consumers have soured on sugar in their diets and have increasingly associated sugar reduction with health and wellness. Industry has responded with reduced-sugar products across numerous food and beverage categories. In tandem, industry suppliers have developed new sweeteners, embraced new sweetener production technologies, and introduced combinations of sweeteners that better replicate traditional sugar’s sensory aspects.
Trends set the Stage
At Innova, we monitor consumer trends, food and beverage trends, and we use a top-down, bottom-up approach to better understand trend drivers. In preparation for annual trend predictions, we combine the macro context of global megatrends, impact of changing lifestyles and attitudes, consumer attitude and behavior research, and category trends.
Today’s global macro context is uncertain and challenging. Consumers worldwide and in the US are worried about everything from personal safety to personal finances (including affordable housing). For that matter, consumers strive for a healthy, nutritious diet at an affordable price. On the positive side, advances in technology have led to innovative ingredient solutions and are empowering consumers in many aspects of their lives.
Innova trend surveys show that consumers want to be self-sufficient and in control. They seek good value through products that are nutritionally and/or functionally superior. Post-pandemic, they express continuing interest in healthier lifestyles. In our surveys, US consumers say they want to be their best mentally and physically, prevent or correct ill health, and eat healthily.
Three of Innova’s Top 10 Trends 2025 are particularly relevant for sweeteners and sugar reduction. The leading trend, “Ingredients and Beyond,” emphasizes the need to elevate product quality beyond the specific ingredients. For consumers, health benefits such as sugar reduction are strong indicators of quality and sweeteners themselves also can reflect quality.
Our second top trend, “Precision Wellness,” includes personal weight management, the leading physical health concern for consumers. Sugar reduction is a key weight management strategy for consumers. Our fifth top trend, “Rethinking Plants,” captures the ongoing love affair with plant-based foods and ingredients—including sweeteners such as stevia and monk fruit.
Health Attitudes Impact Sweeteners
Innova’s consumer research finds consumers interested in food and beverage products that are both convenient and healthy. Among their leading health considerations are (1) desires to avoid all unhealthy ingredients (including sugar) and, in particular, (2) strategies to reduce sugar consumption.
Thus, the market presents opportunities—across all categories—for new and reformulated products with next-generation sweeteners that confer a sugar-like taste profile with reduced sugar content.
US consumers also want (and no doubt, expect) indulgences to taste good. Additionally, they say that indulgent foods could be healthier if they had more natural ingredients and fewer artificial ingredients as well as negative ones, such as sugar. This desire for natural—and not artificial—is driving manufacturers and suppliers alike to reduce sugar and increase use of natural sugar substitute options.
Sweetener Innovation
In soft drinks and sports nutrition, a popular formulation strategy combines artificial sweeteners sucralose and acesulfame-K. Additionally, demand is growing for natural alternatives, such as stevia, monk fruit, and allulose. These sweeteners also are widely used in sports nutrition and soft drinks, followed by confectionery and dairy.
Stevia is a naturally derived sweetener that has gained significant popularity. It’s often used in combination with other sweeteners to enhance taste and reduce bitterness. Monk fruit and monk fruit extract have a high sweetness intensity and also are gaining traction as natural, healthy sugar alternatives.
The rare sugar, allulose, is gaining popularity as a natural and low-calorie sweetener. Its taste profile closely resembles sugar and that makes it a desirable option for manufacturers. Production using precision fermentation has increased the availability of allulose, although high price can be a barrier for some manufacturers.
Sugar Reduction Food and Beverage Trends
New US and Canadian food and beverage launches with sugar-related claims remained stable between 2022 and 2024. These claims are on-pack references to “sugar-free,” “low sugar,” “reduced sugar,” and “no added sugar.” Innova studied all sugar-related claims during a recent five-year period and noticed that “sugar-free” product launches increased—while products with “reduced sugar” decreased as a percentage of total launches.
Looking more specifically at product categories, Sugar-related claims grew most within soft drinks and sports nutrition products between 2020 and 2024. This reflects innovation in sweeteners and sweetener combinations that improve beverage taste and other sensory features. In other categories—all of which are smaller than soft drinks and sports nutrition—launches involving sugar-related claims are steady to declining.
Beverages are a primary sugar reduction battleground. Soft drinks and energy drinks, along with sports nutrition beverages, show significant activity and growth. Dairy alternative drinks are another beverage format where consumers are shifting toward sugar-free options. Elsewhere, “no added sugar” is gaining traction as the trending claim in alcoholic and alcohol-free beverages.
Key sweeteners in sugar-reduced beverages include non-nutritive high intensity sweeteners acesulfame K and sucralose, the sugar alcohol erythritol, the natural sweetener stevia, and soluble fiber. All play key roles in reducing sugar while maintaining flavor and functionality.
Indulgent subcategories—including sweet bakery foods, confections, desserts, ice creams, and fruit-based snacks—also are natural sugar reduction targets. That’s because these items traditionally are sweetened with sugar and other nutritive sweeteners. Recently, innovation in sweet indulgences included a keto-friendly claim to appeal to adherents of the popular diet. However, the number of keto launches has been dropping along with the number of keto diet followers since 2022.
During the past several years, the most commonly used sweeteners in indulgent subcategories are erythritol, other sugar alcohols, and stevia. The increased availability and use of allulose has begun to erode that of sugar alcohols, and some products even carry the claim, “no sugar alcohols.”
Sugar reduction also is gaining traction in savory categories including breads, sauces, ready meals and side dishes. These categories can capitalize on the increasing consumer desire for sugar-free options across the food and beverage products they purchase. Sugar-related claims have become an expected entry on the growing list of must-have claims for a healthy product image.
Ready meals and side dishes are particularly prominent and offer consumers convenient, healthier meal options. Pasta sauces, cooking sauces, and table sauces often are reformulated with a reduced sugar content and give consumers more options to enjoy their favorite dishes without sacrificing flavor or health. BBQ and Asian sauces also are an easy target for sugar reduction because traditional recipes contain sugar, honey, syrup, or other caloric sweeteners. In these applications, we find sucralose most often used while allulose use increases.
Not surprisingly, we also are monitoring launches of sugar-reduced sweet spreads—including nut spreads and chocolate spreads. These products marry indulgence with health in a convenient format that allows consumers to enjoy everyday treats. In recent years, several sweeteners here stand out—including erythritol, sucralose, and the naturally derived sweeteners stevia and monk fruit.
What’s Next?
The United States’ sugar reduction trend is poised to continue well beyond 2025. Consumer interest and acceptance drive the trend and Innova Market Insights expects food and beverage processors to respond with more innovative products and strategies.
We expect additional activity in the dynamic and exciting landscape of sugar-free and sugar-reduced options. Such factors as (1) use of GLP-1 weight loss drugs, (2) consumer desire for natural products, and (3) sentiment against ultra-processed foods all create an even more welcoming environment for sweeteners (especially those that are natural) to pave the way for a sweeter and healthier future.
