'Sugar-free' instant noodles latest to join trend as consumers sour on sweet calories

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'Sugar-free' instant noodles latest to join trend as consumers sour on sweet calories

Published: 06 Mar. 2025, 17:00 Updated: 06 Mar. 2025, 17:10

KIM JU-YEON
[email protected]

Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI

Shoppers look at bibimmyeon products at a supermarket in Seoul. [YONHAP]

The sugar-free trend in Korea isn’t dying down. The 2025 spring season has ushered in a slew of food and beverage product launches, many of them splashed with the “zero-sugar” label — and even instant noodles have joined the lineup.

Such a version of Paldo Bibimmyeon, the best-selling brand of bibimmyeon in Korea — noodles mixed with a sweet and spicy gochujang-based sauce — will start appearing on supermarket shelves on Friday.

Paldo opted for allulose as its substitute over other more commonly used sweeteners like aspartame or sucralose for its “natural sweetness that is most similar to table sugar,” a spokesperson said. The new version contains 10 percent fewer calories and around 13 fewer grams of carbohydrates than the original 130-gram packet of bibimmyeon, but is 10 fewer grams in total weight.

Paldo's new sugar-free bibimmyeon, or noodles mixed with a sweet and spicy gochujang-based sauce, is sweetened with allulose instead of sugar. [PALDO]

Confectionary firm Binggrae also uses the allulose sweetener in its Deep&Low ice cream brand that was launched on Thursday. It comes, for now, in chocolate and coffee flavors, and will be expanded to others by the end of March. Binggrae also launched chocolate and strawberry milk with no added sugar on Wednesday, following the release of a sugarless version of its flagship banana-flavored milk last month. The company now has more than a dozen low- or zero-sugar items in its portfolio.

Woongjin Foods, meanwhile, recently redesigned its Marllin fruit drinks to accentuate the word “Zero” on the bottles. The sugar-free, zero-calorie beverage has sold 35 million units since its launch in February 2023 despite the overall fruit juice market shrinking, according to the firm.

Binggrae released a version of its flagship banana-flavored milk that does not contain added sugar in February. [BINGGRAE]

The manufacturers say they saw a demand for food and drinks with less sugar that fit diverse preferences, including from consumers who pursue a “healthy lifestyle.” They highlight the products’ lower calories and 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 sweeteners — nearly quadrupled from the 92.4 billion won ($65.3 million) in 2020 to 368.3 billion won in 2022; they accounted for 41.3 percent of all carbonated beverage sales in convenience stores in 2023, almost double the 22.5 percent recorded in 2021.

Consumption of such beverages rose as they were perceived to impart lower weight gain, according to aT’s report.

A total of 71 percent of respondents in aT’s survey said they would buy products with alternative sweeteners, and 64.7 percent said they would purchase them even if they were more expensive.

A bottle of zero-sugar soju is compared to a regular soju at the Korea Consumer Agency's (KCA) Seoul office on May 1, 2024. The KCA alerted consumers that zero-sugar soju had little difference in calorie content to regular soju, which already contained almost no sugar, contrary to the beliefs of a majority of surveyed respondents. [NEWS1]

While the zero-sugar claims may be true, they can sometimes be misleading in a way that persuades consumers to buy products based on that wording even if the product does not deliver on the perceived health expectations. It’s a cognitive bias coined the “halo effect,” where people comprehensively perceive something positively based on a single trait.

The Korea Consumer Agency (KCA) alerted consumers in a press release last May that zero-sugar soju had little difference in calorie content to regular soju, which already contained almost no sugar. Considering that the zero-sugar soju had lower alcoholic content, it was difficult to say that that absence had a discernible effect on its calories, the agency said.

This did not meet the expectations of respondents surveyed by the agency, of which 68.8 percent said they thought the sugarless version would have considerably fewer calories.

While the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety and the KCA regulate what products can be labeled "sugar-free" or "low sugar" and how they are advertised, the latter advises consumers to look at nutrition labels and ingredients and not just the sugar content. The agency also does not recommend consuming sweeteners for weight loss or disease-combatting purposes, per the World Health Organization’s guidelines.

BY KIM JU-YEON [[email protected]]