Cutting sugar does not have to mean giving up sweetness — the smarter conversation is about practical, sustainable substitutions
By Mbali Mapholi, Canderel Partner Dietitian
“Eat less sugar.”
It is among the most familiar pieces of nutrition advice we hear. Yet knowing that we should reduce our sugar intake and knowing how to do it in everyday life are two very different things.
What happens to the two teaspoons of sugar in your morning coffee? The sugar added to your tea? The sweetness sprinkled over breakfast? What about the sugar used when baking at home?
For many people, reducing sugar can feel like being asked to give up the small pleasures that make everyday routines enjoyable.
But perhaps we have been asking the wrong question.
Instead of asking, “What do I need to give up?”, a more practical question is: “What can I swap?”
That shift matters because sustainable nutrition is rarely about dramatic overnight changes. It is about identifying the habits we repeat every day and finding realistic ways to improve them.
Start with the sugar you control
The World Health Organization recommends limiting free sugars to less than 10% of total daily energy intake, with further benefits associated with reducing intake to below 5%.
For someone consuming approximately 2,000 calories a day, the 10% threshold equates to around 50 grams — roughly 12 teaspoons — of free sugar.
The challenge is that those teaspoons are rarely consumed in one sitting.
They accumulate throughout the day.
Two teaspoons in coffee. Another in tea. Sugar added to breakfast. A sweetened drink. A sauce or condiment. Then there are packaged foods containing added sugars.
Each individual choice can seem insignificant. Collectively, however, repeated choices can make a meaningful contribution to our overall sugar and energy intake.
That is why one of the simplest places to begin is with the sugar we add ourselves.
Your coffee is a choice. Your tea is a choice. How you sweeten your oats is a choice. The ingredients you use when cooking and baking at home are choices.
These are small decisions, but they are repeated decisions.
And repeated decisions are where meaningful dietary change can begin.
The power of a simple substitution
Sugar provides approximately four kilocalories per gram. A teaspoon containing around four grams therefore provides approximately 16 calories.
Two teaspoons in a cup of coffee provide around 32 calories.
For someone drinking three similarly sweetened coffees a day, that is approaching 100 calories from added sugar in those drinks alone.
This does not mean that coffee containing sugar is inherently “bad”. Rather, it illustrates an important nutritional principle: small additions can add up when they become daily habits.
This is where high-intensity sweeteners can have a practical role.
Because they provide sweetness at very low concentrations, many high-intensity sweeteners contribute little or no energy at the quantities normally consumed. For example, Canderel tablets provide zero calories per tablet.
For someone who enjoys sweet coffee, replacing the sugar they would normally add with an appropriate Canderel product can reduce the calories contributed by that added sugar while preserving the sweet taste they enjoy.
The coffee does not have to disappear.
The sweetness does not necessarily have to disappear either.
The ingredient can change.
Sweetness and metabolic response are not the same thing
There is another reason the distinction between sugar and sweeteners matters.
Sugar is a carbohydrate and contributes energy. It also has a metabolic effect that differs from that of many high-intensity sweeteners, which generally provide little or no carbohydrate at the quantities used and typically have much less effect on blood glucose than sucrose.
That distinction can be relevant for people looking to reduce their sugar or carbohydrate intake.
It also reminds us that taste and nutrition are not identical concepts.
Something can taste sweet without delivering the same amount of sugar or energy as table sugar.
Understanding this gives consumers another option when making dietary decisions.
The WHO sweetener conversation needs nuance
No discussion about sweeteners would be complete without addressing the World Health Organization’s 2023 guidance.
The WHO advised against using non-sugar sweeteners specifically as a long-term strategy for weight control or reducing the risk of non-communicable diseases.
That recommendation is sometimes interpreted as meaning that approved sweeteners are inherently unsafe.
That is an oversimplification.
The WHO recommendation concerning weight management is distinct from the toxicological safety assessment of individual sweeteners. It also does not mean that replacing sugar with a non-sugar sweetener automatically causes weight loss.
It doesn’t.
The more useful question is what happens when a sweetener actually replaces sugar.
If a low- or no-calorie sweetener is used instead of added sugar in a food or beverage, the nutritional composition of that item can change. Depending on the product, the amount of sugar, carbohydrate and calories contributed by that ingredient can be reduced.
That makes sweeteners neither a miracle solution nor a weight-loss treatment.
They are simply one tool that can support sugar reduction.
There is more to sugar reduction than calories
The conversation around sugar often focuses on calories and blood glucose. But oral health deserves attention too.
Frequent exposure to fermentable sugars is strongly associated with dental caries. Oral bacteria can metabolise these sugars and produce acids that contribute to the demineralisation of tooth enamel.
Sweeteners that are not readily fermented by cariogenic bacteria do not provide the same substrate for acid production as fermentable sugars.
Again, the principle is substitution.
Replacing some fermentable sugars with appropriate non-cariogenic alternatives can form part of a more tooth-friendly dietary approach.
It is not a treatment for dental disease, but it can be one component of a broader approach to oral health.
Don’t try to change everything overnight
One of the problems with modern nutrition advice is that it can quickly become overwhelming.
Eat this.
Don’t eat that.
Count this.
Avoid that.
Start exercising.
Read every label.
Cut out sugar.
Cut out processed food.
For someone simply trying to eat better, the sheer volume of advice can make healthy eating feel unnecessarily complicated.
I believe a better starting point is much simpler:
Where is the easiest place in your day to make a better choice?
If you add two teaspoons of sugar to every coffee, start there.
If you add sugar to your breakfast every morning, look at that habit.
If your family regularly bakes, consider whether some of the added sugar can be reduced or substituted.
If you consume large quantities of sugar-sweetened beverages, that may be another obvious place to begin.
You do not need to transform your entire diet overnight.
Start with the habits you repeat most frequently.
Sweeteners are a tool — not a miracle ingredient
It is important to maintain perspective.
Replacing sugar with a sweetener does not suddenly make an otherwise poor diet healthy.
Overall dietary quality still matters.
So do fruit and vegetables, fibre, protein, appropriate portions and physical activity.
But recognising that a practical substitution can help reduce sugar does not diminish the importance of those broader principles.
In fact, it can make healthy eating more achievable.
Canderel offers a range of sweetening options for everyday occasions including coffee, tea, breakfast, cooking and baking. Their role is straightforward: to provide sweetness without adding the same amount of sugar.
For someone actively trying to reduce added sugar, that can be a useful option.
The smartest changes are the ones we can maintain
Nutrition advice does not need to be dramatic to be effective.
If someone drinks three cups of coffee every day, changing how those three coffees are sweetened is a small intervention that can potentially become a long-term habit.
The same applies to tea, breakfast, cooking and baking.
Healthy eating is built largely through the choices we make repeatedly — not just the decisions we make once in a while.
That is why I encourage people to change the question.
Don’t begin with:
“What do I have to give up?”
Ask instead:
“What can I swap?”
Start with the sugar you add yourself. Understand where the rest of your sugar intake comes from. Consider practical alternatives such as Canderel where they make sense for you. And continue improving the overall quality of your diet.
Reducing sugar does not necessarily mean eliminating sweetness or abandoning the foods and drinks you enjoy.
Sometimes, healthier eating begins with something much smaller.
One everyday choice, made a little smarter.
