“Sugar -free” instant noodles recently to join the trend, since consumers get angry in sweet calories

The sugar -free trend in Korea does not die. The spring season 2025 has initiated a number of product launches for food and drinks, many of which were injected with the “Zero-Sugar” label and even instant pasta have joined the line-up.

Such a version of Paldo Bibimmyeon, the best -selling brand of Bibimmyeon In Korea noodles with a sweet and spicy sauce in Gochujang-Werden on Friday in supermarket shelves.

Paldo chose allulose as a replacement about other most commonly used sweeteners such as aspartame or sucralose for its “natural sweetness, which is most similar to table sugar,” said a Hy spokesman. The new version contains 10 percent fewer calories and around 13 fewer grams of carbohydrates than the original 130-gram package BiBimmyeon, but is 10 less gram in total weight.

Paldo's new sugar -free Bibimmyeon or pasta, mixed with a sweet and spicy sauce in Gochujang, is sweetened with allulose instead of sugar. [PALDO]

The confectionery company Binggrae also uses the allulose -sweet in its deep & low Ice Cream brand in its deep & low ICE. It comes to chocolate and coffee aromas for the time being and will be expanded to others by the end of March. Binggrae also launched chocolate and strawberry milk on Wednesday without added sugar after a sugar-free version of her milk with banana taste was released last month. The company now has more than a dozen with low or zero sugar in its portfolio.

Woongjin Foods has recently redesigned his Marllin fruit drinks to emphasize the word “zero” on the bottles. The zero -free, calorie -free drink of the zero has sold 35 million units since its introduction in February 2023.

Binggrae published a version of his milk with banana taste, which does not contain any additional sugar in February. [BINGGRAE]

The manufacturers say that they have seen a demand for food and drinks with less sugar that correspond to different preferences, also from consumers who pursue a “healthy lifestyle”. They underline the lower calories of the products and the “more refreshing” taste in their marketing.

The market for low Sugar options has certainly grown. According to the Korea Agro-Fisheries & Food Trade (AT), the domestic market for carbonated drinks without soluble carbohydrates, the largest among products that use the sweetness of almost $ 92.4 billion ($ 65.3 million) in 2020 to $ 368.3 billion in 2022; They made up for 41.3 percent of all carbonated beverage sales in convenience stores in 2023, almost twice as high as the 22.5 percent recorded in 2021.

The consumption of such drinks rose when they were regarded by AT von AT.

A total of 71 percent of the respondents in the AT survey stated that products with alternative sweeteners and 64.7 percent stated to buy them, even if they were more expensive.

A bottle of zero-sugar Soju will be compared on May 1, 2024 with a regular SOJU in the SEOUL office of the Korea Consumer Agency (KCA). The KCA alerted consumers that zero-sugar-soju had little difference in the calorie content on regular soju, which almost contained sugar, contrary to the misconduct of the respondents of a majority of respondents. [NEWS1]

While the demands of zero-sugar may apply, you can sometimes be misleading that consumers persuaded to buy products on the basis of this wording, even if the product does not provide the perceived health expectations. It is a cognitive bias that shaped the “Halo effect”, in which people perceive something that is based on a single feature.

The Korea Consumer Agency (KCA) pointed out consumers in a press release last May that SOJU in zero-sugar in the calorie content had hardly any difference that contained almost no sugar. In view of the fact that the zero-sugar soju had a lower alcoholic content, it was difficult to say that this absence had a recognizable influence on its calories, said the agency.

This did not meet the expectations of those surveyed by the agency, of which 68.8 percent gave that the sugar -free version would have significantly fewer calories.

While the Ministry of Food and Medicine Safety and the KCA regulate which products can be referred to as “sugar-free” or “low sugar” and how they are advertised, it advises consumers, nutrient labels and ingredients and not only the sugar content. The agency also does not recommend consuming sweeteners for weight loss or disease connection purposes in accordance with the guidelines of the World Health Organization.

By Kim ju-yeon [[email protected]]