What does fructose-free mean? What is low-fructose?

Which products are low fructose or fructose free? What is "Total Fructose"?

Total Fructose

At Frusano, we always consider the Total Fructose content. There are two possible sources of fructose. One part of the total fructose content is just fructose. The other part is the fructose contained in sucrose. Sucrose is half fructose, and half glucose.

Sucrose is the main component of white sugar and cane sugar. While other sweeteners such as coconut sugar and maple syrup are marketed as so-called "healthy" alternatives, they too are mainly comprised exactly the same component as regular white sugar, sucrose. Sucrose is the main sweetener in the vast majority of processed food in drinks. The majority of fructose in conventionally sweetened foods comes from sucrose or from high-fructose sweeteners such as HFCS (mainly used in the US).

Fructose-free and Low-fructose

So far, no legal regulation defines which foods can and cannot be labelled fructose-free, so we have based our guidelines for Total Fructose on the EU Regulation about Sugar (info here):

"Fructose-free": Total fructose (fructose + half of the sucrose) < 0.5g/100g

"Low-fructose": Total fructose (fructose + half of the sucrose) < 5g/100g

All our products are low-fructose according to this definition, and many are fructose-free.

If you look at our packaging in detail, you'll see: We don't just say "fructose-free" and "low-fructose", we also state separate limits for fructose and sucrose. When necessary, we also include information on sorbitol. To find out more about sorbitol and its connection to fructose, please click here.

On our packaging, a fructose-free product will say "<0.5g fructose and <0.5g sucrose". If you take a closer look and do the math, you could say: 0.5g fructose plus half of 0.5g sucrose makes 0.75g total fructose, right? Then why "fructose-free"? Can't they do the math at Frusano? Yes, but we are very careful and precise. "<0.5g" means "less than 0.5g." This means that there is normally much less than 0.5g in the product, usually less than <0.1g. And with a fructose-free product, we guarantee that the sum is no more than 0.5g of Total Fructose. Since we continuously test our products, we are able to monitor these strict values very closely. Here's an example of what could easily happen to any product with natural ingredients:

There are many reasons why fructose and sucrose values can fluctuate in a product. Perhaps the strawberries used in our Strawberry-Rhubarb Spread were harvested at a different time of the year, perhaps there was a drought or they recieved more sun than usual. All of these factors can influence how much fructose and how much sucrose naturally occur in a product. At Frusano, we are prepared for variations to occur in both the fructose and sucrose values, and craft our recipes around this possibility. This way, we are able to keep our products as low in fructose as possible!

How to read the label

When dealing with an intolerance, trying to read the Nutritional label or understanding how much fructose is in a food with online apps and lists can be quite the task. For more info about understanding food labels and tables, please click here.