What does sugar-free mean?

Label wording isn’t arbitrary. The global food labeling framework decides by threshold which word fits which product. For the sugar-free claim, the measure is half a gram of sugar at most, per hundred grams of solid or hundred milliliters of liquid. The word sugars here covers single and double sugar units. Starch falls outside this definition. Even a biscuit made only of flour can carry that claim.

No added sugar says something entirely different: during production, no sugar was added from outside. The food’s own sugar stays put. A fruit yogurt, or a breakfast cereal sweetened with fruit concentrate, can carry a noticeable amount of sugar with none added.

Light is a comparative word. It asks for at least a one-quarter drop from a comparable reference product, no less. What dropped is usually fat, not sugar. And lower isn’t low in absolute terms, only lower than the other.

The whole grain claim also doesn’t say how much of a product is whole grain. In a consumer study with over a thousand adults, close to half of them overestimated the whole grain share of mostly refined-grain products. Brown color, multigrain wording, and the grain-ear image on the package say nothing about that share. The ingredients list is ordered by weight, and more honest here. This claim rests on presence alone, not a proportion.

Most sugar-free candies and gums carry sugar alcohol; these go on the label’s total carbohydrate line, not the sugar line. Another article explains which line covers what. The subject here is the package front. The diabetic product shelf is no guarantee either: a cake there may carry another sweetener instead of table sugar; its flour, fat, and portion stay put. With the package turned over in your hand, the back table says more than the big front letters. The wording on the front is a marketing sentence; the back table is measured information.