When can you use the nutrition claim “no added sugar”?

One of the major grey zones when it comes to nutrition claims is the interpretation of the claim "no added sugar". In the legislation one can read;

"A claim stating that sugars have not been added to a food, and any claim likely to have the same meaning for the consumer, may only be made where the product does not contain any added mono- or disaccharides or any other food used for its sweetening properties. If sugars are naturally present in the food, the following indication should also appear on the label: ‘CONTAINS NATURALLY OCCURRING SUGARS’."

If you look at most of the products stating this claim, the majority have a decent amount of sugar in the nutrient declaration. One of the reasons is the naturally occurring sugar in the product, as we don’t (yet) differ between added or naturally occurring sugar in the nutrient declaration. In fact, there might also be sugar coming from added sweet ingredients such as fruit or juice if the producers can argue that the purpose is something else than sweetening.

The interpretation of this claim and the condition of use for it differ a bit among the EU countries, UK, Iceland and Norway.

Do you want to know more about

• the interpretation of it for the different countries

• arguments to state the claim

• situations when companies have been forced to remove the claims to avoid fines

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