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If you've ever said, "I was born with a sweet tooth," you weren't kidding. According to taste researchers, sweetness is one of our first flavour experiences — newborns clearly sense and enjoy sweet tastes.
 That sweet taste usually comes from one of two types of sweeteners: sugars, which provide calories, and low-calorie sweeteners, which provide few or no calories.
The sweet side of beverages
Except for water and non-sweetened teas and coffees, most popular beverages like sparkling beverages, juices and juice drinks, coffee drinks, sweet teas and sports drinks contain some type of nutritive sweetener, non-nutritive sweetener or a combination of both.
Learning about the sweeteners used in beverages can help you make informed decisions and better understand the role beverages play in a healthy diet.
Nutritive sweeteners
Sweeteners like table sugar (sucrose) and high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) are considered nutritive sweeteners because they are energy-containing carbohydrates that can be used to fuel the body. Both sucrose and HFCS contain about 4 calories per gram, or 16 calories per teaspoon (5-ml). Learn more about carbohydrates.
Non-nutritive sweeteners
Non-nutritive sweeteners are also sometimes called low-calorie or intense sweeteners because their sweetness is so potent — ranging from 200 to 600 times the sweetness of sucrose. That means a little goes a long way. And this is why sweeteners such as aspartame, sucralose and saccharin can taste sweet but contain virtually no calories.
Learn more about common sweeteners used in beverages...
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