A cohort study just released in the journal Obesity reported a decrease in the amount of sugary beverages Americans drink. In the decade between 2003 and 2014, the percentage of kids enjoying a daily sugar- or similarly calorically sweetened beverage fell from nearly 80% to under 61%, and the number of adults doing the same fell from almost 62% down to 50%. The decline was due in great part to the use of non-sugar-sweetened beverages.
But these replacement beverages would not have worked if they could not meet the flavor demands of consumers. The force driving the trends in sweeteners is not in the ingredients’ ability to reduce calories but in their ability to do so without tasting strange.