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Swaps for Sugar

Sugar is 387 kcal, 0.0 g protein and 0.0 g fibre per 100 g. Here are the 121 alternatives in sweets that beat it on at least one of those, with the difference for each.

SweetsTypical portion: 1 tablespoon46 kcal per portion

Where sugar sits in its own category

The median food in sweets is 364 kcal per 100 g. Sugar is 23 kcal above that, so it is at the heavier end of its own shelf before any swap is considered. A typical portion of 1 tablespoon weighs about 12 g and carries 46 kcal, 0.0 g of protein and 0.0 g of fibre. Every difference below is applied to that same portion, so the tables compare like with like.

Lower in calories

Swapping to the lightest of these 3 times a week is about 135 kcal a week and 7 039 kcal a year, holding everything else constant. That last clause is doing a lot of work: appetite, portion size and what you eat later all move, and none of that is in this multiplication. Read it as the size of the lever, not as a forecast of anything about your body.

Higher in protein

Sugar costs no measurable protein. That ratio is usually more useful than the protein column on its own, because a food can be high in protein and high in everything else at the same time.

Higher in fibre

How a swap is worked out

A swap here is a comparison, not a recommendation. For any food, the page takes every other food in the same category of the database and sorts it three ways: lower energy per 100 g, higher protein per 100 g, and higher fibre per 100 g. Each table shows the alternative’s own figure and the difference against the food you started with, so you can see the size of the change rather than a verdict.

Staying inside one category is what makes the comparison mean anything. Swapping a cheese for a cucumber saves a lot of calories and does not replace the cheese; swapping a cheese for a lighter cheese might. The category boundary is the database’s own, and every alternative links to its full page so you can check the numbers rather than take them from a table.

The candidate list is filtered mechanically to plainly-named foods: no comma in the name, at most three words in the identifier, and no cooking, canning, drying or reconstitution qualifier. That removes the long laboratory variants of the same food and leaves the entries you would recognise in a shop. It also means a swap table is a subset of the category, not all of it.

The weekly arithmetic is deliberately plain multiplication. A saving per portion, times three times a week, times fifty-two weeks. It is what the numbers say, and it assumes you change nothing else — which is exactly the assumption that usually fails in practice.

These are per-100 g database averages for whole foods, not a diet plan. Energy is only one property of a food: protein, fibre, salt, cost, satiety and whether you will actually eat it all matter, and none of them is settled by a calorie column. Nothing here is medical or dietary advice and nothing here is a diagnosis. If you are managing a condition, an allergy or a prescribed diet, speak to a clinician or a registered dietitian.

Source: USDA FoodData Central SR Legacy family — per-100 g values for Sugar and every alternative above · checked 2026-09-02

Other swap pages

All swap pages · Full nutrition for sugar

Frequently asked questions