How Sweet Are Artificial Sweeteners? From Sugar to Lugduname
How Sweet Are Artificial Sweeteners? From Sugar to Lugduname Quick Answer Food scientists commonly compare high-intensity sweeteners with sucrose, or ordinary table sugar, as a reference point. Aspartame is roughly 200 times sweeter than sucrose, while sucralose is about 600 times sweeter. Plant-derived options vary widely: steviol glycosides are roughly 200–400 times sweeter, while monk fruit extracts are generally about 100–250 times sweeter. Thaumatin reaches roughly 2,000–3,000 times the sweetness of sucrose, while neotame and advantame reach into the thousands and tens of thousands. Lugduname sits at the extreme end, with published estimates around 220,000–300,000 times the sweetness of sucrose, but it is not an approved food sweetener. A packet of sugar and a packet of high-intensity sweetener may both make coffee taste sweet, but chemically they are playing very different games. Some sweet compounds can produce a strong sweet sensat...