There's a bottle behind most coffee shop counters that deserves more scrutiny than it gets. It comes in every flavour imaginable — vanilla, hazelnut, caramel, pumpkin spice — and it promises something that sounds too good to be true: all the sweetness, none of the calories.
It is too good to be true. And the evidence is catching up with it.
The Sweetener Story
The major coffee syrup brands — Monin, Torani, their supermarket equivalents — offer "sugar free" or "zero calorie" versions sweetened with artificial alternatives. The most common are sucralose, acesulfame potassium (Ace-K), and aspartame. These are approved food additives, legal, and widely used. They are also the subject of a growing body of research that should give anyone pause before they pump them into their morning drink.
A landmark study published in Nature Medicine found that erythritol — another common sweetener — was associated with increased risk of cardiovascular events. The research on sucralose suggests it may disrupt gut microbiome balance, affecting digestion, immunity, and mood in ways researchers are still unpicking. Aspartame was reclassified by the World Health Organisation in 2023 as "possibly carcinogenic" — not a definitive finding, but not nothing either.
The Paradox of Zero Calories
Here's the thing that should make anyone suspicious: people who regularly consume artificial sweeteners don't, on average, lose weight. In fact several large scale studies suggest the opposite — that artificial sweetener consumption is associated with increased appetite, altered insulin response, and paradoxically, weight gain over time.
The mechanism is still debated, but one compelling theory is that sweet taste without caloric consequence confuses the body's appetite regulation systems. You taste sweetness, your body prepares for an energy hit that never comes, and you end up hungrier than before. The zero calorie promise may be undermining the very goal it's supposed to serve.
What Moderate Real Sugar Actually Does
This is where it gets counterintuitive. Moderate consumption of real sugar — particularly unrefined sugars like muscovado or blackstrap molasses — behaves very differently in the body than artificial alternatives. Unrefined dark sugars contain trace minerals. Blackstrap molasses specifically is rich in iron, calcium, magnesium and potassium. They register as food. They satisfy in a way that synthetic sweetness doesn't.
The key word is moderate. Nobody is suggesting pouring sugar into everything with abandon. But a measured amount of real, unrefined sweetness in a single daily drink is metabolically and psychologically very different from a synthetic substitute consumed in the belief that it's harmless.
What Goes Into Cwpan®
Cwpan® is the world's first syrup for tea. It's made from muscovado sugar, blackstrap molasses, sultanas, cinnamon, cloves, orange peel, mixed spice and nutmeg. Every ingredient has a name you recognise. Nothing is synthesised. Nothing is hidden.
A standard measure of Cwpan in a cup of tea adds approximately 30-35 calories. That's less than a digestive biscuit. It also adds cinnamon — which has genuine evidence behind it for blood sugar regulation — and the warming spices that have been used in Welsh kitchens for generations because they work, taste extraordinary, and make an ordinary cup of tea into something worth stopping for.
We're not making health claims. We're making tea worth drinking.
The Choice
The zero calorie coffee syrup market is worth billions. It has excellent marketing, widespread distribution, and the reassuring word "zero" on every label. It also has an increasingly complicated relationship with the science of what it actually does to human bodies.
You can decide what goes in your cup. We'd suggest making it something real.
Cwpan®. The world's first syrup for tea. Made in Wales from ingredients you can pronounce.*
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