Most natural sweeteners lean on marketing. NNB Nutrition ran the actual benchmark instead. SweetVantage Reb M9 went head-to-head with 6 sweeteners across water, green tea, EAAs, and sparkling water in a trained-panel sensory study. It matched sugar and tracked closest to sucralose.
Natural sweeteners normally rely solely on marketing and hope. It's rare when we see actual benchmarks, which makes sense, given the way stevia-based sweeteners have effectively "stalled out" in the market due to their bitterness. At best, companies will compare their ingredient against basic stevia, pick the most favorable base, and call it a win.
But what about a real world test? What they skip on is something a bit more challenging, like green tea, an EAA blend, or sparkling water.
NNB Nutrition built the study that didn't skip any of it, because those results are harder to control and they're a true test of how a sweetener performs..
NNB commissioned a formal sensory comparison through SAM Sensory (a division of Eurofins) to run a rigorous head-to-head evaluation of their new SweetVantage Reb M9 and the upcoming Reb M9 + Brazzein combination against six other sweeteners across multiple beverage matrices. They shared these results with PricePlow ahead of IFT FIRST 2026, where they'll be at Booth #1426, before the official September launch, because the data tells a story that's too useful to sit on.
Sign up below to catch the full results coverage when it drops in September:
Subscribe to PricePlow's Newsletter and Alerts on These Topics
How the Study Ran
SAM Sensory conducted this as a Descriptive Analysis (DA), a trained-panel protocol in which 10 expert panelists evaluated each sweetener condition twice each, yielding 20 evaluations per matrix. Results were analyzed using Fisher's Least Significant Difference (LSD) test at the 95% confidence level. Samples sharing a letter superscript aren't statistically different from each other at that threshold.
NNB Nutrition revolutionizes natural sweeteners with SweetVantage. A 3-year, $2.5M project delivers clean-tasting stevia that covers the entire palate. Perfect for beverages and powders.
The comparator set for most matrices:
Rebaudioside M9 (Reb M9)
Rebaudioside M (Reb M)
Rebaudioside D (Reb D)
Monk Fruit
Sucrose
Sucralose
Reb M9 + Brazzein
Sucrose and sucralose anchored the comparison: sugar as the clean-sweetness gold standard, sucralose as the artificial-style ceiling that natural alternatives need to match as closely as possible.
Four matrices are completed so far at time of press:
Plain water (baseline)
Green tea
An EAA blend
Sparkling water
(Cola is pending)
NNB's Chief Brand Officer Dustin Elliott explained the reasoning during a June 2026 briefing with PricePlow: "The reason why we have to test these sweeteners across different platforms is because they're going to react differently when you're trying to flavor different things."
NNB intends to use this research for B2B claims and is exploring publication. As a commissioned proprietary study, it isn't currently in a peer-reviewed journal.
Water gave every sweetener its cleanest shot. With no competing flavor compounds to interact with, every off-note is exposed.
Reb M9 scored statistically equivalent to Sucrose on sweetness intensity (both sharing the same statistical letter group at 95% confidence). On off-notes, it was statistically low in Sourness, Fruity flavor and aftertaste, Paper flavor and aftertaste, and Tartness. Its Bitterness score landed in the same statistical group as sucralose, well below the levels posted by Reb M and Reb D.
The other natural sweeteners weren't as clean:
Reb D was the worst performer: highest Bitterness (53.5) and Bitter aftertaste (84.0) in the set, plus the highest Paper flavor (81.1). Sucrose scored 0.0 on Bitter aftertaste in plain water, for reference.
Reb M carried the highest Metallic flavor (34.5).
Monk Fruit dominated on Sourness, Fruity notes, Chemical/Cooling, Tartness, and Astringency.
Sucrose had the lowest scores across nearly every off-note attribute, as expected.
Reb M9 + Brazzein delivered the highest Sweet aftertaste of any sample in the set, statistically above every other option tested. It also carried slightly more Fruity flavor than Reb M9 alone, although at a modest difference. Otherwise, it tracked very close to sucralose across the profile.
In Green Tea: The Matrix Changes Everything
Green tea is where the study earns its keep.
IFT FIRST 2025 revealed the future of food tech. NNB Nutrition's "Sugar is Dead" campaign features SweetVantage with 2.5x stevia potency, no bitterness. Also trending: precision fermentation, functional foods over supplements, and traditional fats making a comeback.
Monk Fruit, a middling performer in plain water, became a serious problem in green tea: highest Bitterness, Bitter aftertaste, and Black Licorice flavor in the entire comparator set. There's a substantial off-note load, and masking just won't fix it. Formulators relying on Monk Fruit in tea-based beverages should look at this data carefully.
Reb D continued underperforming: highest metallic, chemical/cooling, and astringency, plus the lowest Sweetness in the matrix.
Reb M9 had no attributes where it was statistically high or low in the green tea matrix. That's the cleanest possible outcome in trained-panel DA. It aligned closest to sucralose, with no attribute showing a statistically dominant difference between them.
Reb M9 + Brazzein followed the same pattern: no standout attributes, and direct comparison to sucralose showed only slight differences in bitterness, astringency, and sweet aftertaste. As Elliott put it: "Even though it didn't stand out as being the best in any one particular attribute, among all the other natural sweeteners you could use, it tested as the closest to sucralose."
The green tea finding also makes the case for why matrix-specific testing matters in the first place. Monk Fruit's strong-in-isolation profile collapses when it hits the phenolic compounds in tea. Reb M9 doesn't.
In an EAA Blend: Sweetness Holds, Off-Notes Rise
For the EAA matrix, NNB narrowed the comparison to three options: Sucrose, sucralose, and reb M9 + brazzein. The other natural sweeteners were cut because EAAs create a difficult flavor environment, and their results weren't even worth including.
Shawn Wells and Dustin Elliott reveal NNB Nutrition's Pure, Potent, Precise revolution at SupplySide Global 2025, discussing precision fermentation, Pürest Creatine, OnSwitch beverage innovation, and the future of pharmaceutical-grade supplement ingredients on Episode #192 of the PricePlow Podcast
The sweetness target is achievable. Reb M9 + Brazzein (79.4) landed statistically equivalent to both sucrose (79.0) and sucralose (81.0) on sweetness intensity. There's no significant difference between any of the three.
Off-notes tell a more complicated story. EAAs shift the flavor baseline for everyone. Sucrose itself registered 48.9 on Bitterness in the EAA matrix, up from 0.0 in plain water. Sucralose ran higher too. Reb M9 + Brazzein ran higher still: Bitterness (72.3), metallic (16.3), chemical/cooling (8.7), and astringency (6.3) were all statistically above sucralose's scores. The Rubber Tire attribute, which appeared across all three sweeteners in the EAA base, wasn't significantly different between Reb M9 + brazzein and sucralose.
The practical read: in an EAA base, Reb M9 + Brazzein achieves sweetness parity with sucralose but carries more off-note load in a matrix that's already demanding. It's not a clean swap, but it's the natural option with the best sweetness match and a known starting point for formula optimization. That's useful information for any EAA brand currently relying on sucralose.
In Sparkling Water: Sweetness Matched
NNB's sparkling water arm wrapped just ahead of IFT. According to Elliott, Reb M9 + Brazzein matched sucralose's sweetness in that matrix, the same headline as EAA but in a considerably cleaner base. Full attribute-level data will be included in the September coverage.
What This Means for Formulators
When your base is neutral and clean, still water or most clear beverages, SweetVantage Reb M9 alone delivers sugar-equivalent sweetness with minimal off-note load. It's the best-performing natural option for sugar-replacement applications when the matrix cooperates.
Shawn Wells and Dustin Elliott of NNB Nutrition join the PricePlow Podcast for Episode #152 to discuss innovative ingredients that capture ongoing trends like GLP-1 and MPS. We also get into Dustin's trip to China, NNB's participation in XPO NRG with MitoPrime, and Shawn's psychedelic experiences and his post-trip supplement stack.
When you're targeting sucralose-style performance, Reb M9 + Brazzein is the closest natural match across every matrix tested. Brazzein is a naturally occurring protein sweetener isolated from the oubli berry (Pentadiplandra brazzeana), a plant native to West Africa. It pairs with Reb M9 to elevate Sweet aftertaste and round the profile in a way that single-compound stevia approaches can't reach. Both SweetVantage Reb M9 and Reb M9 + Brazzein officially launch in September 2026. Brazzein hasn't been commercially available until now.
When your matrix is inherently challenging, like EAA blends or certain protein bases, sweetness parity with sucralose is achievable, but off-note management becomes a formula challenge regardless of which sweetener you choose. The data tells you which specific attributes need attention.
When your base is tea: skip Monk Fruit. The data is decisive on that one.
Elliott's stated goal for this research is to give formulators a genuine decision tool: "You could even just use our results to formulate whatever it is you're formulating or whatever application. It'll straight up just tell you Reb D sucks for this, M is better for that, Brazzein plus Reb M9 is best for this."
Visit NNB at IFT FIRST 2026
NNB Nutrition will be at IFT FIRST 2026 at McCormick Place in Chicago (July 13-16) at Booth #1426. The booth features a MitoBurn-enhanced functional drink sweetened with SweetVantage Reb M9, a protein cookie collaboration, a longevity-ingredient Rice Krispie treat concept, and the remaining SweetVantage + Allulose packets from last year while supplies last.
For formulators interested in working with SweetVantage Reb M9 or the Reb M9 + Brazzein combination ahead of September, the booth is the place to taste both and talk timelines with the NNB team directly.
Data Beats a Sales Pitch
The cola arm is still running, and a full writeup with complete results will be published here on PricePlow alongside the September official launch. The water, green tea, EAA, and sparkling water data already gives formulators something the ingredient supply chain rarely provides: third-party-verified, application-specific benchmarks on what every major natural sweetener actually does in a real-world situation.
NNB ran this comparison with an independent sensory firm, across real-world matrices, and shared results that weren't flattering to every option in the lineup. That kind of transparency is the pitch heading into September.
Subscribe to PricePlow's Newsletter and Alerts on These Topics
PricePlow is a team of supplement industry veterans that include medical students, competitive strength athletes, and scientific researchers who all became involved with dieting and supplements out of personal need.
The team's collective experiences and research target athletic performance and body composition goals, relying on low-toxicity meat-based diets.
