The market for sugar-free sweets in the US has declined in recent years, according to a report released by Leatherhead International. The report, The Global Market for Intense Sweeteners, states that although the US has a large market for sugar confectionery, sugar-free sweets account for a very limited share of that market, only growing category in sweets is  sugar-free chewing gum. The report notes that sugar-free gums account for 82 per cent of the total US chewing gum market by value, equivalent to sales worth almost $3.38bn in 2009.

The Leatherhead report claim that this drop in demand for sugar-free sweets in the US market generates mainly due to the consumer concern over the safety and artificial nature of many sugar substitutes.

Recent consumer research indicates that as a result of those concerns around 45% of US adult consumers are planning to reduce consumption of sweeteners such as aspartame, sucralose and saccharin. After saccharin, aspartame is the second most used artificial sweetener in the world, with the sweetener being the subject of cancer claims and counter-claims. But a study last year from Italian researchers, which included over 3,000 participants and which was published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention, supported the safety profile of these sweeteners, including aspartame.

It appears that the sugar-free confectionery market is well established in Spain and France, where Leatherhead reaserchers found that the sector accounts for over a third of overall volume sales of sugar confectionery.In contrast, the penetration of sugar-free sweets is much lower in the UK and Germany. The sugar-free sector accounts for just 11 per cent of sales in the UK market by volume, compared with 10 per cent in Germany. 

According to the Leatherhead data, natural sweeteners may account for up to a quarter of the global intense sweeteners market by the middle of the next decade. The analysts claim that stevia-derived sweeteners are driving the move away from additives and ingredients that are perceived as artificial, and it already accounts for 14 per cent of the intense sweeteners market, up from just one per cent in 2007.

An opinion released this month by the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) concluded that steviol glycosides are not carcinogenic or genotoxic, a finding in line with other similar bodies across the world. Leatherhead said that, as a result of this conclusion, the EU is widely expected to approve the use of stevia in food manufacture at some point, probably during the early stages of 2011.

Source confectionerynews.com