Household Ingredients Compared  ›  Sugar and Sweeteners (Singapore)

Sugar and sweeteners: what's actually in it?

One shelf holds very different things. Cane sugar in its white, brown, raw, caster and icing forms is, in most cases, a single ingredient: cane sugar. Icing mixture is different from icing sugar — it adds starch so it does not clump. Tabletop sweeteners (Equal, Splenda, Lakanto, Natvia and the like) are rarely a single sweetener: most are a bulk carrier — lactose, dextrose, maltodextrin or erythritol — plus a small amount of a high-intensity sweetener such as aspartame, sucralose or steviol glycosides. And golden syrup is not sugar in crystal form at all, but a partially inverted cane-sugar syrup. The front of the pack rarely makes any of this clear; the ingredient list does.

This page covers sugar and tabletop sweeteners sold in Singapore: white, brown, raw, caster and icing sugar, stevia, monk fruit, erythritol, xylitol, and syrups sold as sweeteners (golden syrup, glucose syrup). Honey is a separate category and is excluded here except as a cross-reference. Gula melaka / palm sugar sold as a cooking ingredient is noted in seen-but-not-verified, not panelled as a tabletop sweetener. This page does not give a health score, a ranking, or a "best" pick, and it does not rank sweeteners against each other.

The headline, in 30 seconds

• Plain cane sugar is a one-ingredient product. Native Organic White Crystal Cane Sugar (FairPrice ingredient section) lists simply "Sugar"; CSR caster and raw sugar list "Cane sugar". Brown sugar is not a different plant — CSR describes its brown sugar as caster sugar blended with the dark sugar syrups from refining.
• Icing sugar and icing mixture are not the same thing. CSR Soft Icing Mixture lists cane sugar (96%) plus tapioca or maize starch; a pure icing sugar is ground white sugar with no starch added. Check which one the pack says.
• Most tabletop sweeteners are mostly carrier, not sweetener. Splenda packets list dextrose and maltodextrin before sucralose; Equal Classic's sweetening ingredient is aspartame carried on lactose; Equal Stevia and Lakanto are carried mainly on erythritol.
• "Monk fruit" and "stevia" on the front usually mean a blend. Lakanto Golden lists erythritol first, then monk fruit extract. Natvia lists erythritol plus a steviol glycosides blend. The named fruit or leaf is the small, intense part — erythritol is the bulk.
• Golden syrup is a single-ingredient syrup. Lyle's Golden Syrup lists "Partially inverted refiners syrup" — sucrose, glucose and fructose from cane sugar, inverted so it stays liquid.
• Many SG sweeteners could not be panelled at all. FairPrice lists a large Green Earth range, Now Foods erythritol/stevia/monk fruit, xylitol brands and several CSR sugars, but no verbatim ingredient list was retrievable for them in this pass — they are in seen-but-not-verified, not guessed.

At a glance

Panelled with verbatim lists: 15 products. Seen-but-not-verified: see the list below. No prices are shown: they change weekly and would go stale. This site compares ingredients only.

Source-strength key used on this page: FairPrice SG ingredient section = strongest SG source; SG brand site (Equal Singapore) = SG-facing brand source; iHerb SG / Shopee SG listing = SG channel listing, seller/brand transcription; Open Food Facts (secondary) = community database, flagged; AU / UK / US list, flagged = that market's list, never presented as the SG pack.

Cane sugar — white, raw, caster

Brown sugar and icing sugar

Brown sugar is not a separate crop. CSR's own description: its soft brown sugar is produced by blending the dark sugar syrups obtained during the refining process with caster sugar; its dark brown sugar is 100% natural with molasses character. No verbatim SG ingredient list was retrieved for any brown sugar in this pass — see seen-but-not-verified.

Tabletop sweeteners — Equal, Splenda

Monk fruit and stevia blends — Lakanto, Natvia

Syrups sold as sweeteners — golden syrup

Seen but not verified — do not panel until checked

• CSR Brown Sugar, CSR Dark Brown Sugar, CSR Pure Icing Sugar, CSR Golden Syrup, CSR Smart Sugar — CSR sugars are sold in Singapore, but no verbatim SG ingredient list was retrieved for any of these in this pass. CSR's own descriptions (brown = caster sugar + dark refining syrups; golden syrup = sugar syrups removed during refining) are descriptions, not pack lists. SG pack photos needed.
• FairPrice house-brand sugar range — FairPrice lists its own sugar under its house brand, but no ingredient section was retrieved in this pass. Needs a FairPrice product-page check.
• Green Earth range (FairPrice) — Brown Sugar, Organic Cane Sugar, Crystal Rock Sugar, Organic Molasses Sugar, Organic Blackstrapped Molasses, Monk Fruit Sweetener, Erythritol, Erythritol Monk Fruit Sweetener, Stevia Powder, Golden Stevia Sweetener, Organic Natural Stevia Sweetener Liquid, Stevia Leaf, Fructose. All listed at FairPrice; no verbatim ingredient list retrieved for any of them in this pass. The similar-products listings confirm the range exists — they do not give lists.
• Equal Sugar Replacement — Monk Fruit (200 g and 60 g, FairPrice) — listed at FairPrice, no ingredient section retrieved. Do not assume it matches Lakanto's two-ingredient list.
• Equal Sweetener Tablets — Classic, Low Calorie, Stevia — listed at FairPrice; no ingredient section retrieved. Tablet formats differ from sachets (Equal notes tablets contain lactose and, for Classic, cellulose gum and calcium stearate in the US FAQ) — do not copy the sachet list onto tablets.
• Now Foods range (FairPrice / iHerb SG) — Erythritol Natural Sweetener, Organic Monk Fruit Zero-Calorie Sweetener, Better Stevia Liquid Sweetener (Original / French Vanilla / Certified Organic), Better Stevia Original. Listed in Singapore; no verbatim list retrieved for any of them in this pass.
• Xylitol — xylitol sweeteners are sold in Singapore (including as an ingredient in other products), but no standalone xylitol product with a verbatim SG list was verified in this pass. Needs an inventory of the xylitol shelf (brands, formats) and pack checks.
• Stevia leaf / liquid stevia (other brands) — Carmencita Crystallized Stevia Sweetener, Green Earth stevia liquids/powders (above), and other liquid stevia drops listed at FairPrice/specialty grocers; no verbatim lists retrieved.
• Truvia / Whole Earth stevia & monk fruit blends — Whole Earth Stevia Leaf & Monk Fruit blend lists erythritol, stevia leaf extract, natural flavours and monk fruit extract in US listings, with a five-ingredient variant adding fructose and chicory root fibre; no SG pack verified, so neither variant is panelled as an SG product.
• Glucose syrup (as a retail sweetener) — glucose syrup is sold as a baking ingredient in Singapore, but no retail pack with a verbatim SG list was verified in this pass. It appears inside other products' lists (e.g. in confectionery) — that is not a panel for glucose syrup itself.
• Singlong Gula Malacca Syrup, Nature's Superfoods Organic Coconut Palm Sugar, Nature's Superfoods Organic Monk Fruit Sweetener, Simply Natural Organic Cane Sugar, Gabrielle T Organic Cane Sugar, GPA Sugar (raw / white / fine / coarse, sticks), Taffy Low GI Natural Raw Sugar — all listed at FairPrice; no verbatim ingredient list retrieved for any of them in this pass.
• Don Don Donki / Mustafa / Meidi-Ya / Le Petit Depot / Little Farms / Giant / Sheng Siong / Cold Storage sugar and sweetener shelves — not inventoried with verified lists in this pass. Japanese/Korean sweeteners (e.g. oligosaccharide syrups, brown-sugar blocks) and Indian jaggery sold at Mustafa are likely present and are not covered here.
• Saccharin / Sweet'N Low, aspartame-only sachets other than Equal, sucralose-only granulated (Splenda granulated pouch) — no SG pack lists retrieved; do not copy the Splenda packet list onto the granulated pouch format.

Nutrition — what the numbers say

All figures in the table are as sold, per 100 g, unless a row is flagged per-serving. For sugar and sweeteners the table is mostly sugars/carbohydrate — that is the factual content of these products, and no ranking of sweeteners is made from it. No official Singapore Nutri-Grade (A–D) was found printed on any of these listings in this pass, so none is quoted here; no grade has been assigned.

Salt and sodium: salt = sodium × 2.5. The table shows sodium as printed (in mg) with the salt equivalent in brackets. Where a source printed salt only, sodium is calculated from it (salt ÷ 2.5) and flagged as calculated. Sodium is not presented as salt, and salt is not presented as sodium.

Total vs added sugars: for cane sugar, total sugars and added sugars are the same thing — the product is sugar. For tabletop sweeteners, a "sugars 0 g" figure does not mean the product contains no carbohydrate: dextrose and maltodextrin carriers are counted as sugars/carbohydrate on some panels and not on others, so read the ingredient list alongside the number. Sugars figures here are total sugars as printed, not added sugars, unless the source states added sugars.

Open Food Facts is a community database and is flagged as secondary where used: the pack and the retailer nutrition section take precedence if they disagree. Figures marked "not stated" were not in the source retrieved; they are not estimated, borrowed from another variant, or copied across flavours.

Observed numbers, no verdict: CSR caster and raw caster sugars list 99.8 g sugars per 100 g. Lyle's Golden Syrup lists 79 g sugars per 100 g and 0 g fat. No per-100 g nutrition panel was verified in this pass for any other panelled product, so no comparison of sweeteners is made from nutrition figures here.

Seen but not verified (nutrition): no per-100 g nutrition panel was verified in this pass for Native Organic White Crystal Cane Sugar, CSR Raw Sugar, CSR White Sugar, CSR Soft Icing Mixture, RedMan Icing Sugar — Snow White, Equal Classic, Equal Gold (FairPrice gives sugars 0 g and sodium 0 mg with no stated basis — not tabled), Equal Stevia, Splenda, Lakanto Golden, Lakanto Classic, Natvia Natural Sweetener, Natvia Natural Brown Sweetener, and all products in seen-but-not-verified above. Their ingredient panels are unchanged; their nutrition figures are not estimated here.

How to read a sugar or sweetener label — the jargon, in plain English

Cane sugar / sugar

The same thing in most SG packs: sucrose from sugar cane. White, raw, caster and brown differ in crystal size and in how much molasses/refining syrup remains — not in the plant they come from.

Caster sugar

White sugar ground to finer crystals, so it dissolves faster in baking. Same ingredient as white sugar, different crystal size.

Raw sugar

Less-refined cane sugar, golden in colour, with a light honey-like flavour from residual molasses. Still essentially sucrose.

Icing sugar vs icing mixture

Icing sugar is finely ground white sugar. Icing mixture is icing sugar plus starch (tapioca or maize, or corn starch) to stop it clumping. The starch is the difference — read the list.

Steviol glycosides / stevia leaf extract

The sweet compounds extracted from the stevia leaf, about 300 times sweeter than sugar. In a tabletop pack they are a tiny fraction of the contents; erythritol or another carrier is the bulk.

Monk fruit extract / mogrosides

The sweet extract of luo han guo (monk fruit). As with stevia, it is the small, intense part of a blend whose bulk is usually erythritol.

Erythritol (E968)

A sugar alcohol used as the bulk carrier in most stevia/monk-fruit tabletop blends. It is not sugar, and it is not the sweetener doing most of the sweetening per gram — it gives the blend sugar-like volume.

Aspartame / sucralose / acesulfame K

High-intensity (artificial) sweeteners, hundreds of times sweeter than sugar, used in tiny amounts. Equal Classic uses aspartame; Equal Gold and Splenda use sucralose.

Dextrose / maltodextrin

Carriers in Splenda packets (and in some Equal formats). Both are carbohydrates derived from starch — they give the packet volume, and they are why a "zero calorie" packet can still list carbohydrate/sugars on some panels.

Partially inverted refiners syrup

The ingredient declaration for golden syrup: cane sugar partly split (inverted) into glucose and fructose, so the syrup stays liquid instead of crystallising.

"No added sugar" vs "sugar-free" vs "zero calorie"

For a sweetener, "zero calorie" usually means less than a threshold per serving, not literally zero ingredients — read the per-serving basis and the carrier list. For cane sugar, none of these terms applies: the product is sugar.

What this page is not

• Not a health score, and not a "best" pick. Cane sugar, stevia blends, monk-fruit blends, aspartame and sucralose products are different products, and this page does not rank them.
• Not a taste test, and not a price comparison. Prices change weekly; ingredients change less often, but still change.
• Not complete. The Green Earth range, Now Foods range, most CSR variants, xylitol, and the Donki/Mustafa/Meidi-Ya/Le Petit Depot/Giant/Sheng Siong/Cold Storage sweetener shelves are not yet panelled, for the verification reasons given, not hidden.
• Not medical advice. People managing diabetes, phenylketonuria (aspartame contains phenylalanine), or other conditions should check the pack and, where relevant, a clinician — this page only quotes what the packs list.

Sources and method

Checked 5–6 November 2026 from: FairPrice ingredient sections (Native Organic White Crystal Cane Sugar; Equal Gold); FairPrice product descriptions (RedMan Icing Sugar); FairPrice sweeteners category listing (inventory: Equal, Green Earth, Now Foods, Lakanto, GPA, Taffy, Nature's Superfoods, Simply Natural, Gabrielle T, Carmencita); Equal Singapore FAQ (sg.equal.com — Classic/Gold/Stevia sweetening ingredients and carriers); Splenda brand PDFs (US packets list); iHerb Singapore (Lakanto Golden); Shopee Singapore seller listings (Lakanto Classic/Golden); Natvia official site (Brown) and brand/retailer listings (Natural); UK foodservice/retailer listings for Lyle's Golden Syrup; Open Food Facts (CSR Caster, secondary, AU) and Australian retailer listings (CSR Raw/White/Soft Icing Mixture). Full per-fact source list is in the accompanying research notes. Nutrition section added 5–6 November 2026: figures are standardised to per 100 g where the source gives per-100 figures; per-serving-only figures are labelled as such and are not converted; sugars are total sugars as printed, not added sugars, unless the source states added sugars; salt = sodium × 2.5. Where a full pack list could not be verified, the product is in seen-but-not-verified instead of being panelled.