Sweet Talk: A Simple Guide to the Sweeteners in Your Pantry

Oct 16, 2026GF Oats Australia

The usual suspects

Refined white sugar (sucrose) is the most common sweetener in packaged food. It's highly processed, stripped of anything but sweetness, and absorbed quickly, so blood sugar can rise and fall fast.

Glucose syrup and dextrose are cheap, fast-acting sugars often made from corn or wheat starch. They're used to add sweetness, bulk and shelf life. Their glycaemic index (GI) is higher than table sugar's.

High fructose syrups and invert sugars are common in biscuits, bars and sauces. They're sweet and inexpensive, but they're still heavily refined and add sugar without adding much else.

Artificial sweeteners like aspartame, sucralose and acesulfame K are intensely sweet and add almost no energy. Some people don't like the aftertaste, and many prefer to avoid lab-made ingredients altogether.

Alternatives

Why we choose coconut sugar

Coconut sugar comes from the sap of coconut palm flowers. The sap is gently heated until the water evaporates, leaving a caramel-coloured sugar with a rich, toffee-like flavour.

Because it's less refined, it keeps small amounts of naturally occurring minerals and has a lower GI than regular white sugar. It's still sugar, and we'll always be upfront about that. But when we do need sweetness, we'd rather it come from a simple, minimally processed source that tastes wonderful with oats.

Why we choose erythritol

Erythritol is a sugar alcohol that occurs naturally in small amounts in fruits like grapes and pears. It gives sweetness with almost no kilojoules and doesn't raise blood glucose, so it's a helpful option for people watching their sugar intake. It's also gentler on the tummy than many other sugar alcohols, which matters to a lot of our customers.

Used alongside coconut sugar, it lets us bring the sweetness down without losing the flavour.

What about monk fruit?

Monk fruit (also called luo han guo) is a small green melon that has been grown in southern China for centuries. Its sweetness comes from natural compounds called mogrosides rather than from sugar. Those compounds are so concentrated that monk fruit extract is roughly 100 to 250 times sweeter than table sugar, so only a tiny amount is needed.

Like erythritol, it adds almost no kilojoules and doesn’t raise blood glucose, which makes it popular with people watching their sugar intake. Because it’s so intense on its own, you’ll usually find it blended with erythritol to make it easier to use and to round out the flavour. That’s a pairing that works well, as each one softens the other’s quirks.

What about honey?

Honey is one of the oldest sweeteners there is. Bees make it from flower nectar, and it needs little more than extracting and straining before it reaches the jar. Depending on where the bees have been foraging, it can taste mild and floral or rich and almost malty.

Raw honey keeps small amounts of antioxidants, enzymes and minerals, and its GI is generally lower than glucose’s, although it varies a lot between types. Still, honey is mostly sugar, made up of fructose and glucose. Spoon for spoon, it adds about the same amount of sugar as the white stuff, so it’s best enjoyed in small amounts.

Honey is naturally gluten free, but it isn’t the best choice for everyone. It’s high in fructose, so people following a low FODMAP diet often need to limit it or avoid it.

A drizzle over a warm bowl of oats is hard to beat. Just keep it a drizzle, not a pour.

Hidden Sugars in cereal: picture of corn flakes bowl

The hidden sugar in "healthy" breakfasts

Breakfast cereals and snack bars often come in bright boxes with words like "wholegrain", "natural" or "high fibre" on the front. Turn the box over, though, and you'll often find a lot of sugar.

Many popular breakfast cereals contain 20–35g of sugar per 100g. That's roughly a quarter to a third of the box. Muesli bars and "breakfast biscuits" are often much the same. A single serve can hold 2–4 teaspoons of sugar before you've added any fruit, honey or flavoured yoghurt.

To put that in perspective, the World Health Organization suggests adults keep added sugars to under 10% of their daily energy. Ideally that's closer to 6 teaspoons (about 25g) a day. One bowl of a sugary cereal can use up half of that before 8am.

Now compare that with the humble bowl of oats. Plain rolled oats have about 1g of natural sugar per 100g. That's it. No syrups, no coatings, no clusters glued together with glucose. You get slow-release energy, fibre that keeps you full until lunch, and a blank canvas you control. Add a handful of berries, a sliced banana or a sprinkle of cinnamon, and you've made breakfast sweet the way nature intended.

A few label-reading tips:

Check the "per 100g" column, not just "per serve". Serving sizes vary and can make sugar look smaller than it is.
As a rough guide, under 5g per 100g is low in sugar, and over 15g is high.
Watch for sugar's many aliases: glucose syrup, dextrose, maltose, rice malt syrup, invert sugar and fruit juice concentrate.
If sugar (in any form) appears in the first three ingredients, it's a major part of what you're eating.

Sometimes the simplest breakfast really is the best one.

Choose your own: picture of bowl of porridge with GF Oats Traditional and Oranic Oats

Our approach: less, but better

On our farms at Wandering, Western Australia, we grow oats the way we believe food should be: clean, green and pure. We treat what goes into our products the same way. That means:

Keeping ingredient lists short and recognisable
Choosing less refined sweeteners over cheap syrups
Using just enough sweetness to make breakfast feel like a treat, not a sugar hit

Good food shouldn't need a dictionary to understand. When you pick up a bag of GF Oats, you'll know what's inside and where it came from, from our paddocks to your plate.

Have a question about our ingredients? Get in touch. We love talking oats.