What Is Allulose? The Rare Sugar That Can Read 0 g Added Sugar on US Labels
Allulose is a rare sugar, known to chemists as D-psicose. It turns up in small amounts in wheat, raisins, dried figs, molasses and maple syrup. On US labels the FDA lets it count as 0.4 calories per gram and stay out of Total Sugars and Added Sugars, though it still sits inside Total Carbohydrate.
What Is Allulose?
Allulose is a monosaccharide, which is the term for a single sugar unit. The FDA's 2020 guidance gives its formula as C6H12O6 and calls it an epimer of D-fructose. Same atoms as fructose, arranged in a different order.
It does occur in nature, in small amounts. The FDA names wheat, fruits such as raisins and dried figs, and foods such as molasses, maple syrup and brown sugar. The allulose in packaged food is not scraped out of figs, though. Makers convert fructose into it with an enzyme.
It tastes sweet, but not as sweet as sugar. A 2023 crossover trial in Nutrients by Teysseire and colleagues puts allulose and erythritol at around 60 to 80 percent of the sweetness of sucrose. So a maker needs a little more of it to hit the same level of sweet.
Why Allulose Can Show 0 g Added Sugar on US Labels
Does allulose count as sugar? Chemically yes, and on the US panel mostly no. The reason is a labelling decision, not a claim that allulose stopped being a sugar.
What the FDA Guidance Says
In October 2020 the FDA finalised its guidance on declaring allulose on Nutrition and Supplement Facts labels. The agency said it intends to use enforcement discretion. Makers may leave allulose out of the Total Sugars and Added Sugars lines, in both grams and percent Daily Value, and may count it at 0.4 calories per gram.
Three things stay true under that same guidance. Allulose must still be counted in Total Carbohydrate. It must still be named in the ingredient list. And guidance is not law: the FDA states plainly that its guidance documents do not establish legally enforceable responsibilities, and a rulemaking is still pending.
That leaves the ingredient list as your one reliable place to spot it. Look for allulose, D-allulose or D-psicose. No line on the panel hands you the grams.
A Worked Label Example
Take two versions of the same product. Each carries 10 g of sweetener and nothing else sugary. Here is how the panel reads.
| Nutrition Facts line | 10 g allulose | 10 g table sugar |
|---|---|---|
| Total Carbohydrate | 10 g | 10 g |
| Total Sugars | 0 g | 10 g |
| Added Sugars | 0 g | 10 g |
| Calories from that sweetener | about 4 | about 40 |
The carbohydrate line does not budge. The two sugar lines do. That gap is the whole story, and it is why a pack can read 0 g added sugar and still list a sweetener high in the ingredients.
Look at the table sugar column for a second. Ten grams is about 2.4 teaspoons at 4.2 g per teaspoon, and 40 calories at the standard 4 calories per gram, the figure behind calories in a gram of sugar. The Sugar to Calories Calculator converts sugar grams into calories, teaspoons and cubes if you want to run a pack of your own.
Is Allulose Safe? What the Evidence Shows
The evidence base is thinner and shorter than the shelf presence suggests. It comes down to GRAS notices, a few small human trials that ran for hours or days, and animal work, with no long-term trial in people. Most of what is documented on allulose side effects comes from one tolerance study.
GRAS Status in the US
The FDA's 2020 guidance says the agency did not object to three GRAS notices covering allulose as a sugar substitute: GRN 400, GRN 498 and GRN 693.
It helps to know what that route is. A company concludes that qualified experts consider its use of the substance safe, then files a notice. The FDA writes back that it has no questions. That is not premarket approval, and the agency does not run the safety testing itself.
The distinction matters because of how it gets retold. "GRAS" becomes "approved by the FDA" in a lot of coverage, and the two are not the same thing. Read it as: nobody at the FDA objected.
What the Human Studies Report
Han and colleagues ran a non-randomised tolerance trial in healthy young adults, published in Nutrients in 2018. They reported severe diarrhea symptoms at a single dose of 0.5 g per kg of body weight. Against sugar, allulose produced significantly more diarrhea (p = 0.004), abdominal distention (p = 0.039) and abdominal pain (p = 0.031).
When the same team raised total daily intake gradually to 1.0 g per kg of body weight, they recorded severe nausea, abdominal pain, headache, anorexia and diarrheal symptoms. Two co-authors worked for an allulose producer, though the paper declares no conflict of interest.
The 2023 Teysseire trial has the better design: randomised, double blind and crossover, in 18 healthy adults. It was set up as allulose vs erythritol vs water: each person received 25 g of allulose, 50 g of erythritol or 300 mL of water, delivered into the stomach. Glucose and insulin came out lower after allulose than after water, although the authors' Bayesian models did not confirm the insulin result. They saw no effect on blood lipids, uric acid or hsCRP.
What the Research Has Not Settled
The 2023 authors list their own limits plainly. One acute dose, a small group, and nothing at all about long-term use.
The longest study people quote, Cayabyab and colleagues in Nutrients in 2024, ran for 12 weeks in rats. Rodent results do not tell you what happens in a person. Anyone waving that paper around as proof about humans has skipped a step.
Allulose vs Table Sugar
Here is how the two compare on the points a US label actually reflects.
| Allulose | Table sugar (sucrose) | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Rare sugar (a monosaccharide) | Sugar (a disaccharide) |
| Sweetness | Around 60 to 80 percent of sucrose (Teysseire 2023) | The reference point |
| Calories per gram on US labels | 0.4 (FDA 2020 guidance) | 4 |
| Counted in Total Sugars and Added Sugars | No, under FDA enforcement discretion | Yes |
None of this carries across to other sweeteners. Erythritol and stevia belong to different classes with their own labelling rules, so their grams and their panel lines behave differently.
What "0 g Added Sugar" Does Not Tell You
That zero is the output of a US labelling rule, and nothing more.
The daily numbers people actually track come from elsewhere. The WHO puts free sugars below 10 percent of daily calories, which is about 50 g at 2,000 calories, and says dropping under 5 percent, roughly 25 g, may bring further benefit. The AHA caps added sugars at 25 g a day for women and 36 g for men. The guide to how much sugar per day turns those into a personal number, and how much sugar in a can of Coke shows how fast one drink eats into them.
There is a second thing the zero hides. Those allulose grams did not vanish, they moved up the panel. If Total Sugars reads 0 g while Total Carbohydrate is high and the ingredients open with allulose, the label has already shown you where they went.
So treat a 0 g Added Sugars pack as a starting point, not a verdict. Three steps get you a number you can trust.
- Read the Added Sugars grams first. That is the number the panel hands you, and on an allulose product it may well be zero.
- Scan the ingredient list before you believe the zero. A 0 g line means no counted added sugars, not no sweetener. The Hidden Sugar Finder highlights the 90 names sugar hides behind on labels, and it is the same scan that turns up the sugar in breakfast cereal. Check for allulose, D-allulose and D-psicose yourself, since those are the names in the FDA guidance.
- Log the grams the label gives you. There is no allulose figure to log, because those grams sit up in Total Carbohydrate. Record the Added Sugars number and move on.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is allulose a sugar alcohol?
No. The FDA's 2020 guidance describes allulose as a monosaccharide, a single sugar unit. Sugar alcohols such as erythritol are polyols, a different class of carbohydrate with their own labelling treatment.
Does allulose still count in Total Carbohydrate?
Yes. The FDA's 2020 guidance keeps allulose grams inside Total Carbohydrate even when they are left out of Total Sugars and Added Sugars. That is how a pack can read 0 g Added Sugars while those same grams sit higher up the panel.
Is allulose the same as fructose?
No, though they are close. The FDA calls allulose an epimer of D-fructose: same chemical formula, different structure. The guidance cites a mass balance study in seven people in which about 70 percent of an oral dose left the body intact in urine and feces within 48 hours.
Is allulose banned in Europe?
"Banned" is the wrong word. In its opinion of June 2025 the EFSA Panel on Nutrition, Novel Foods and Food Allergens concluded that the safety of D-allulose as a novel food could not be established, because the applicant never supplied the data EFSA asked for. That is missing data, not evidence of harm. Status varies by country, so check the EU union list of novel foods or the UK Food Standards Agency for where things stand now.
The Takeaway
Allulose is a real sugar that a US label is allowed to treat as if it were not one. That rule is specific, recent and still provisional, and it says nothing about how much of anything you should eat.
This is general information, not medical advice. If you have diabetes or another condition, follow the numbers your clinician gives you.
If you want the Added Sugars grams logged without the arithmetic, Sugar Lens is free on the App Store for iPhone. Photograph the food, review and confirm the estimate it gives in grams, and see the day against the WHO and AHA limits. There is no Android version yet.