BULK vs BULK-FREE
SWEETENERS

• What's a Bulk-Free Sweetener? High-intensity sweeteners, such as pure extracts of stevia and monk fruit, provide a super sweet taste with a tiny volume. They offer no bulk (weight and volume) to your recipes, and so are referred to as BULK-FREE SWEETENERS. Use them whenever sweetness is all you need—such as in hot or cold drinks, smoothies, cocktails, and sugar-free jello. They will not help thicken your foods, bind ingredients, brown or caramelize. And that's why the vast majority of the stevia and monk fruit products you'll find in stores will not be pure extract. 

 

• What's a Bulk Sweetener? Whenever you need a sugar alternative that contributes not only to a sweet taste but also to texture, shelf life, moisture retention, color, and aroma—such as in baking—look for BULK SWEETENERS. For example, table sugar is a bulk sweetener, but not zero-calories. Zero-calorie alternatives typically have a mildly-sweet main ingredient such as erythritol,  allulose,  sweet fibers, xylitol, or glucose/maltodextrin. They are carbohydrates that add minimal calories per serving, meeting FDA standards for zero-calorie foods because they provide <5 calories per serving.

 

• Why can't anybody make a stevia without erythritol? I'm often asked, Why is stevia mixed with erythritol and other ingredients? As said before, pure leaf extracts provide a sweet taste with tiny volume and weight. A good rule of thumb is that one teaspoon of table sugar is generally equivalent to just 1/64 of a teaspoon of pure stevia. Because of that, sugar substitutes often require BULK ingredients so they can have an overall resemblance to table sugar. The basic idea is that something is needed to fill that empty space when you remove sugar. The most common bulk ingredients in products sold in stores include erythritol and allulose. They improve the taste of stevia extracts AND make it easier to measure sugar substitutes at home. Instead of having to measure or weigh minuscule amounts of product, you can use the measuring tools you have in your kitchen. Here's what erythritol offers to sugar substitutes: 
   

  1. make them spoonable and pourable

  2. improve their mouthfeel (body and smoothness)

  3. improve the taste by masking off-flavors

  4. provide sweetness synergy (boost sweetness).

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• Note that most stevia sweeteners in stores have just a hint of stevia, and you essentially have erythritol. Even though the label says stevia, it has a tiny pinch of leaf extract. The weight ratio between erythritol and stevia is sometimes 200 to 2000 to about 1. That means that although almost 99% of the weight comes from erythritol, 70 to 99% of the sweetness comes from the stevia extract.