Artificial sweetener trends revealed

Technavio has announced the top four emerging trends impacting the artificial sweetener market in the UK to 2019.

Arushi Thakur, analyst for food research at Technavio, says, “The artificial sweetener market in the UK is expected to reach $93.87 million by 2019, growing at a CAGR of 1.84%. The moderate growth rate during the forecast period is attributed to rising demand for natural sweeteners, such as stevia, and declining demand for diet soft drinks, which are the primary users of artificial sweeteners. These factors could pose a serious challenge to the growth of the market during the forecast period.”

According to Technavio’s report, trends include the blending of two or more artificial sweeteners that are combined to mask the bitter or metallic taste of the sweetener in the final product. Some companies blend sucralose and neotame to enhance the quality of the final product, for example. It is also common to add some starch based sweeteners to artificial sweeteners to imitate the sweetness of sugar.

The mixing of alcohol with diet soft drinks allows consumers to drink alcohols containing artificial sweeteners to limit the overall number of calories consumed. When alcohol is consumed with sugared beverages, the sugar slows down the absorption of alcohol from the stomach into the bloodstream. The absence of sugar in artificial sweetener containing alcoholic drinks makes the absorption of alcohol into the bloodstream much faster.

Product innovations are continuing to drive sales more than ever after the competition in the artificial sweetener market is crossing new barriers with the introduction of functional product lines. Artificial sweetener manufacturers need to develop products with new flavours suiting local preferences and health claims. New product types, tastes and an increasing number of health oriented and functional food and beverage products are now prevalent in the UK. Although aspartame products still dominate the market, they are gradually losing ground to other sweeteners, such as sucralose, which claims to be 600 times sweeter than sucrose, twice as sweet as saccharin and three times as sweet as aspartame.

There is also an increasing demand for calorie free beverages, which has become the largest end user segment in the artificial sweetener market in the UK with a 45-47% market share in 2014. The demand for calorie free beverages is increasing due to an increasing concern about sugar levels and the calories present in a particular beverage. Consumers are switching to these beverages as they help in maintaining low calorie levels and are also less harmful for your teeth and mouth.

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