Equal (sweetener)

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The Equal brand logo.

EQUAL is a popular brand of artificial sweetener made mainly from aspartame. EQUAL is marketed by The Merisant Company, a global corporation which also owns the well known NutraSweet brand and which has headquarters in Chicago, Illinois, Switzerland, Mexico, and Australia. In French parts of Canada, EQUAL is known as ÉGAL.

In the early 1980s, Equal and its European counterpart, Canderel, were the first aspartame-based sweeteners to be sold to the public. Up to that point, there had only been one major artificial table sweetener available, which was saccharin-based products.^[1]

Equal is sold variously as a bottled powder ("Equal Spoonful"), in blue individual-serve sachets or packets, and as a dissolving tablet for use in beverages such as tea and coffee. Equal sachets contain dextrose, aspartame (1.7%), acesulfame potassium (1.2%), starch, silicon dioxide (an anti-caking agent), maltodextrin, and unspecified flavouring. (Source: Equal sachet made in Argentina for sale by Merisant Australia Pty Ltd, January 2007). Equal tablets may also contain lactose.

Despite ongoing controversy as to whether aspartame is safe or harmful, aspartame based products have gained regulatory approvals permitting sale in more than 100 countries. Merisant's NutraSweet company states that aspartame is now used in over 5,000 products and consumed by some 250 million people worldwide.^[2]

[edit] Aspartame-containing products made by NutraSweet / Merisant

Canderel - sold in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Mexico. It is the leading aspartame-based sweetener in France (where it was launched in 1979) and the United Kingdom (since 1983).^[3]
Equal - first sold in the United States in 1982,^[4] this brand is also sold in Australia and India.
EqualSweet - sold in Argentina
NutraSweet - used as an ingredient in many processed foods, drinks and tablets, in 1997 it also began to be marketed as a table sweetener in the United States.^[5]