Sweeteners in nicotine pouches explained

Almost every nicotine pouch is sweetened, usually with acesulfame K, sucralose or xylitol, at somewhere between 0.3 and 3.3 milligrams per pouch. The surprise is that the two groups do different jobs: the high-intensity sweeteners sweeten, and the sugar alcohols are mostly there as bulk. Only one country in the world makes a maker print any of it on the can.

Sweeteners are the most-declared ingredient class in the category and one of the least discussed. Where I have had to do arithmetic to join two sources, I say so. For the whole ingredient list rather than this slice of it, what is inside a nicotine pouch besides nicotine is the companion page, and nicotine pouches explained is the pillar.

What is actually in there: the only label census that exists

In 2023 the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment screened 50 nicotine pouch products bought on the European market. One arrived as an unsolicited free sample with nothing declared on it, so the label count runs to 49. Their Table 1 counts what was printed on those packages, and the sweetener row reads:

“Xylitol (E967), 17; acesulfame K (E950), 15; sucralose (E955), 15; erythritol (E968), 5; stevia (E960), 3; maltitol (E965), 2”

That is 57 declarations across 49 labels, which makes sweeteners the largest ingredient category in the study by count — ahead of fillers at 53 and acidity regulators at 51. The narrative puts it plainly: “Sweeteners and aroma additives were declared on almost all products. Mostly used sweeteners were xylitol, acesulfame K, and sucralose.”

Two caveats belong next to those numbers, and the authors state both. “The frequency of the appearance of certain flavors was not recorded, since sample selection was not representative.” And: “No exhaustive market analysis was performed and the abundance of identified compounds is not necessarily representative for the entire market.” So 17 out of 49 for xylitol is a count of a convenience sample, not a market share. The study was funded by BfR’s own intramural budget — “intramural funding of the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) (SFP Grant no. 1322-772)” — and the authors declare no conflict of interest.

One sweetener turned up that was on nobody’s label. The team’s gas chromatography found saccharin in two samples, noting that “Saccharin is a sweetening agent that does not fall under the Regulation (EC) No. 1334/2008” on flavourings. They group it with substances that may be non-intentionally added or impurities, without resolving which. Two hits is not evidence of deliberate undeclared sweetening — but it is the kind of thing that only shows up when somebody runs the samples.

How much, in milligrams — the measurements

Label counts tell you what is present, not how much. For that there is one published quantitative study of US-market pouches, from a Yale group on NIH and FDA money, using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry:

“Acesulfame-k was detected in on!, Zyn, and Velo ONPs (~0.3 to 0.9 mg/pouch), including products marketed as “Unflavored” or “Flavor ban-approved.””

“In Velo ONPs, sweetened with sucralose (~0.6 to 1.2 mg/pouch), higher nicotine strength products contained higher sucralose levels.”

That second clause is the interesting one: sweetener loading is not constant across a brand’s range — in VELO it tracks nicotine strength upward. A later preprint from the same group, same method, found higher numbers in newer products: acesulfame K at roughly 2.1 to 3.3 mg per pouch in one “heat” product, sucralose at roughly 1.7 to 2.1 mg in two others. That is a preprint, so treat the upper end as provisional. The honest range is 0.3 to 1.2 mg per pouch for the established brands, with newer products two to three times that.

No equivalent figure exists for any of the sugar alcohols. Nobody has published milligrams of xylitol, maltitol, erythritol or sorbitol per pouch, and I will not estimate one — that absence matters later, in the dog section.

The comparison table

Sweetener	E number	Type	Labels (of 49)	Measured per pouch	Allowed in Swedish snus as a sweetener?
Xylitol	E 967	Sugar alcohol	17	Not published	No — permitted only for uses other than sweetening
Acesulfame K	E 950	High-intensity	15	0.3–0.9 mg (up to ~3.3 mg in a preprint)	Yes, capped at 4 g/kg
Sucralose	E 955	High-intensity	15	0.6–1.2 mg (up to ~2.1 mg in a preprint)	No — not on the permitted list at all
Erythritol	E 968	Sugar alcohol	5	Not published	No — permitted only for uses other than sweetening
Steviol glycosides	E 960	Plant-derived	3	Not published	No — not on the permitted list at all
Maltitol	E 965	Sugar alcohol	2	Not published	No — permitted only for uses other than sweetening
Saccharin	E 954	High-intensity	0 (found in 2 by assay)	Not published	Yes, capped at 2.5 g/kg

The last column is about tobacco snus, not pouches, and the reason that distinction is worth a column of its own is the subject of the legal section below.

Why a pouch is sweetened at all — and the answer splits in two

The intuitive answer is masking: nicotine is bitter, a pouch is deliberately alkaline, so you sweeten it to make it bearable. That is half right, and the half that is right is not the half most people mean.

Two manufacturers answer the question directly, and they answer it the same way. ZYN’s US FAQ splits its ingredients by function and puts the two classes in different buckets:

“SWEETENERS (Acesulfame K): Artificial sugar substitute used to produce a sweet taste.”

“FILLERS (Micro crystalline cellulose, maltitol, and gum arabic): Ingredients used to add bulk to each pouch.”

Maltitol is a sugar alcohol. ZYN files it under fillers. VELO does the same by a different route, listing five ingredient types and splitting sweetening from bulking: “Natural and artificial sweeteners provide a pleasant taste without added sugar” and, separately, “We add plant-based ingredients to bulk the product and make it a comfortable size.”

Swedish Match’s patent filings agree, in more detail. In the application behind the rectangular pouch format, maltitol appears once — as a filler: “The filling material may then be a particulate material comprising nicotine or a salt thereof and one or more fillers, such as polysaccharides (e.g. maltitol and mannitol) and/or microcrystalline cellulose.” A second family quantifies it: the filling was “approximately 84% by dry weight of a combination of granules of microcrystalline cellulose and maltitol”. Whatever that maltitol is for, it is not there in trace amounts to taste sweet.

For the high-intensity sweeteners, the masking case is real but it is an inference, and the people making it flag it as one. The Yale group concludes that “Sweetness imparted by sweetener addition to ONPs likely reduces the aversive sensory effects of nicotine and other ONP constituents” — note “likely”. Their direct evidence is a mouse experiment: “In mice, artificial sweeteners, at levels present in ONPs, increase nicotine consumption.” BfR reaches for the same idea and hedges it the same way, writing that without flavour additives a pouch “would elicit an unpleasant bitter taste or even oral irritations and pain”, and then: “It can be assumed that nicotine pouches are marketed with various flavor supplements to circumvent this discomfort.” An assumption, stated as one, by a federal risk assessor.

There is good human evidence that the thing to be masked is real. A double-blind randomised experiment in which 73 young adults rated twenty ZYN and on! products found that “high (vs. low) nicotine strength produced statistically significant lower ratings of appeal (b = -8.75, 95% confidence interval [CI] = -15.41, -2.08) and smoothness (b = -7.72, 95% CI = -14.01, -1.44) and higher harshness ratings (b = 7.21, 95% CI = 1.07, 13.36).” Stronger pouches are measurably harsher. That trial also measured perceived sweetness and found it moves with pH, in an inverted U — which is a finding about sweetness that almost nobody has picked up, and which sits next to what pouch pH does to the hit.

So my reading: the high-intensity sweeteners sweeten and probably soften, and the sugar alcohols are structural. Treating “sweetener” as one thing is what makes this confusing.

What the patents conspicuously do not say

I searched the full text of both Swedish Match pouch patent families for the vocabulary of masking. Across EP3087852A1 and EP4018846B1, the word “bitter” occurs zero times and the word “mask” occurs zero times. Neither filing defines “sweetener”, although both define other terms expressly. Where a sweetening agent appears at all, it appears as a bare list member among “flavouring agents, cooling agents, heating agents, sweetening agents, colorants, humectants” and the rest — an optional extra with no stated purpose.

What the filings do assign a purpose to is salt. “Salt, such as sodium chloride, potassium chloride, magnesium chloride, calcium chloride and any combinations thereof, is added mainly for its effect on taste.” Mainly for its effect on taste — that is the sentence the sweetener never gets. The pH adjuster gets one too: “Sodium carbonate may also be used to give the products their characteristic aroma profile.” The same pattern turns up in tobacco snus, which is what gives snus its flavour.

None of that proves the sweetener masks nothing. It does mean that when you read that pouches are sweetened to hide the nicotine, nobody who makes them has written that down.

Who has to tell you: one country, and not by the route you would guess

Brand disclosure is patchy. ZYN names its sweetener. VELO names the function but not the substance. Nordic Spirit’s FAQ no longer declares pouch ingredients at all — it has been given over to a lozenge product, for which it does list “Perlz contain Xylitol, Maltitol, Coating Agent, Flavourings, Nicotine.” Rogue has a page answering what its pouches are made of, and the complete answer is: “Rogue Pouches contain quality nicotine bound to a polymer resin to create nicotine polacrilex. Nicotine polacrilex is combined with flavors and other food grade ingredients resulting in a flavorful, quality pouch.” The words sweetener, sucralose, acesulfame, maltitol and xylitol appear nowhere on that page — while elsewhere on it a product is sold on its “heavy-hitting sweetness”. Sweetness advertised, sweetener undisclosed. I could find no first-party ingredient declaration for on! at all; every candidate manufacturer domain failed to resolve or served an empty page.

That patchiness exists because almost nowhere obliges them. In the EU a nicotine pouch is not a food: the definition in Regulation (EC) No 178/2002 turns on being ingested, and a pouch is not ingested. Additive law is tethered to food — Regulation (EC) No 1333/2008 “lays down rules on food additives used in foods” and applies “to food additives.” No food, no additive rules, no ingredient list. The clearest proof the gap is real is that BfR asked for it to be closed, recommending that a future regulation cover nicotine-free variants too and that “ingredients used should be authorized for its use in food and should fulfill the requirements by food law”. You do not recommend that a rule should apply if it already does.

In the United States a pouch is the opposite: it is a tobacco product, because the statute reaches nicotine “from any source” and expressly extends to “any tobacco product containing nicotine that is not made or derived from tobacco.” That brings a disclosure duty, but it runs to the regulator, not to you — manufacturers must give FDA “a listing of all ingredients, including tobacco, substances, compounds, and additives” by brand and by quantity, and what gets published is the harmful constituents list, not the recipe. ZYN naming acesulfame K on its website is a voluntary act.

Which leaves Sweden, and Sweden is where it gets strange.

Sweden equates pouches with food, then exempts them from the food rules

Swedish law does something no other country does. Under the Food Act, “Med livsmedel jämställs i lagen” — equated with food in this Act — comes a two-item list, and item 2 is “snus, snusliknande produkter och tuggtobak”. Snus and pouches sit in the same legal bucket as tap water, which is item 1. The Food Agency is explicit that this is a drafting device and not a classification: snus and snus-like products “är inte livsmedel”, it says, and have merely been “jämställts med livsmedel som en lagteknisk lösning” — equated with food as a legal-technical solution.

Then the food-side rules that follow deliberately leave pouches out. The Food Agency’s 2024 regulation carries a closed positive list of permitted additives, and its scope is snus and chewing tobacco only: “Endast de livsmedelstillsatser som anges i bilagan till dessa föreskrifter får ingå i snus och tuggtobak.” Only the additives in the annex may be used — in snus and chewing tobacco. The ingredient-declaration rule is narrower still, applying only to snus-like products without nicotine. The Agency says the consequence out loud: “För snusliknande produkter saknas särskilda bestämmelser om vilka tillsatser eller aromer som får ingå i produkten.” For snus-like products there are no special provisions on which additives may be in them.

And the annex itself is worth reading, because it does two things I did not expect. Every sugar alcohol on it is permitted with a condition attached — “E 965 Maltitol (för annan användning än som sötningsmedel)”, and the same parenthesis on xylitol, erythritol, isomalt, lactitol and mannitol. For use other than as a sweetener. Sweden’s regulator, Swedish Match’s patents and ZYN’s own FAQ independently arrive at the same place: in this product class the polyols are not there to sweeten. Meanwhile only two high-intensity sweeteners are permitted at all, both capped — acesulfame K at 4 g/kg and saccharin at 2.5 g/kg — and sucralose and steviol glycosides are absent from the list entirely. On a closed positive list, absent means prohibited. Sucralose, one of the two commonest sweeteners on European pouch labels, may not lawfully go into Swedish snus.

So: does any Swedish can have to list its sweetener? Yes — and the duty arrives from the opposite direction. The Act on tobacco-free nicotine products requires an ingredient declaration on the pack, the implementing ordinance spells out that it must contain “en förteckning över alla ingredienser som ingår i produkten i fallande viktordning”, a list of all ingredients in descending order of weight, and the Public Health Agency’s rules require it to sit on one of the largest surfaces and cover 20 per cent of it, in Swedish. Not food law. Nicotine law.

The corollary is tidy and slightly absurd: a ZYN can sold in Stockholm must list acesulfame K on the pack; the same product sold in Ohio need not, and the company tells you anyway on a website.

How much of it actually gets into you

Before worrying about any of these substances, it is worth knowing how much leaves the pouch. A 2026 clinical study measured exactly that, and the number is small:

“Use of 20-mg NP for 30 min resulted in the extraction of 30.1% flavor components and 17.3% sweeteners, but only 0.16% and 3.4% of the amount measured in the reference NPs were detected in saliva, respectively.”

The authors’ summary: “Thus, very little nicotine, flavor components, and sweeteners were swallowed during NP use.” Just under a fifth of the sweetener leaves the pouch over half an hour, and about 3.4 per cent of the pouch’s content shows up in saliva.

The study was run and funded by BAT, a pouch manufacturer: “At the time the study was conducted, all authors were employees of BAT, which was the sponsor and funding source of this study.” That is a direct interest in a low number. It is also the only measurement of its kind, and the direction is not implausible — a pouch is designed to hold its contents.

Put that against the regulatory limits. EFSA raised the acceptable daily intake for acesulfame K in April 2025 to 15 mg per kilogram of body weight per day, and in February 2026 confirmed sucralose at the same 15 mg/kg bw per day. For a 70 kg adult that is 1,050 mg a day of either. On BfR’s own worst-case usage scenario of 20 pouches a day, 20 × 0.9 mg of acesulfame K is 18 mg, or about 1.7 per cent of the ADI; 20 × 1.2 mg of sucralose is 24 mg, about 2.3 per cent. Even at the preprint’s highest figure, 20 × 3.3 mg is 66 mg, about 6.3 per cent. That arithmetic is mine, from their numbers — but it is not close, and the swallowed fraction above makes it more conservative still.

The polyols have their own EU rule: food containing more than 10 per cent added polyols must warn that “excessive consumption may produce laxative effects”. Here the maths genuinely could bite — if maltitol is more than about an eighth of that 84 per cent filling, a pouch is over the threshold by mass fraction. The rule never applies, for two separate reasons: it is a rule about food, and a pouch is not food; and the laxative effect is a consequence of swallowing, which is not how a pouch is used. The honest summary is that a pouch is plausibly over the mass threshold and comfortably outside the rule.

The dog question, with the arithmetic done

Xylitol is on 17 of those 49 labels, so this is not hypothetical, and xylitol is genuinely dangerous to dogs. FDA’s consumer page describes the mechanism — “This rapid release of insulin may result in a rapid and profound decrease in the level of blood sugar (hypoglycemia), an effect that can occur within 10 to 60 minutes of eating the xylitol” — and lists the products to watch, which are gum, mints, baked goods, peanut butter, toothpaste and the rest. Nicotine pouches are not on FDA’s list. Snus is not on it either.

For a dose threshold you have to go to veterinary toxicology. The Merck Veterinary Manual gives two: “Doses of xylitol greater than approximately 100 mg/kg (45 mg/lb) have been associated with hypoglycemia in dogs”, and “Some dogs ingesting xylitol at doses > 500 mg/kg (227 mg/lb) may develop severe hepatic insufficiency or failure.”

Now bound it. Nobody publishes xylitol per pouch, so I cannot calculate a dose — but I can calculate a ceiling, because the pouch is small. The patent gives a filling of 0.34 g, or 340 mg total. For a 5 kg dog the hypoglycaemia threshold is 500 mg of xylitol: an entire pouch, even if it were pure xylitol, does not reach it. The liver threshold for the same dog is 2,500 mg, about seven whole pouches of pure xylitol. That calculation is mine, and it is deliberately generous in the direction of alarm.

Which means the xylitol framing is the wrong one. The hazard to a dog that eats a pouch is the nicotine, not the sweetener, and those two should not be rolled into one sentence the way they usually are. If your dog has eaten a pouch, that is a vet call about nicotine.

Teeth

I expected nothing here and found a directly relevant trial. A randomised crossover study from the University of Gothenburg tested ZYN products against 10% sucrose and 10% xylitol rinses, measuring dental plaque acidogenicity. Its conclusion: “In healthy tobacco-based snus users, dental plaque acidogenicity decreased following ad libitum use of ZYN nicotine pouches, suggesting a reduced acidogenic response under the conditions of this study.” And: “No statistically significant changes in plaque amount were observed during the six-week study.”

That study is industry-funded, and the statement must sit next to the result: “The authors have received funding and study material from Swedish Match AB for this research. However, the company had no role in study design, data collection, data analysis, data interpretation, or writing of the manuscript.” Pointing the same way, and without industry money, a cross-sectional study of 126 pouch users across nine Stockholm clinics reported “No increased risk of caries or periodontal disease was observed” for up to six years of use — while also finding oral lesions in 79% of pouch users, which is a different question and not a sweetener question.

So on the narrow point: the sweetener in a pouch does not look like a caries risk, and the one source implying otherwise is a narrative review with no pouch data in it.

The experiment nobody has run

The question most readers want answered — does the sweetener change how strong a pouch feels, or how much nicotine it delivers — has never been tested in a human being. Across six PubMed query strategies the decisive ones return nothing: pouches or snus combined with sucralose, acesulfame, maltitol or xylitol in humans, zero; sweeteners combined with buccal absorption or oral mucosa and nicotine, zero. The one human sensory trial of pouches varied nicotine and pH. The one human pharmacokinetic study varied strength and duration.

What exists instead is adjacent. Sweeteners increase nicotine consumption in mice at pouch-realistic levels. In humans, but with e-cigarettes rather than pouches, “Sucralose-containing solutions increased ECIG product appeal, puff duration, and puff volume during the 10-puff directed bout.” In rats, “Saccharin increased nicotine preference in females, but not in males.” All of that says sweeteners change behaviour. None of it says a sweeter pouch feels stronger.

Which is worth holding onto if you have read why mint pouches feel stronger than they are. Cooling has a measured receptor mechanism behind that effect. Sweetness does not — not yet. The experiment is straightforward and nobody has run it.

Frequently asked questions

Are nicotine pouches sweet?

Most are, mildly. Sweeteners were declared on almost all 49 labels in the BfR census, including on products sold as unflavoured — the Yale assay found acesulfame K in pouches marketed as “Unflavored” and as “Flavor ban-approved”.

Do nicotine pouches contain sugar?

No sugar was declared on any of the 49 labels. What is used is high-intensity sweeteners and sugar alcohols, which are not sugars.

Is the sweetener in a pouch bad for you?

On the exposure arithmetic, the high-intensity sweeteners come to a few per cent of the acceptable daily intake even at twenty pouches a day, and only a small fraction of that is swallowed. That is a statement about the sweetener and nothing else — the nicotine in a pouch is addictive and the product is not safe.

Which brands tell you what sweetener they use?

Of the brands I could check, only ZYN names one. VELO names the function, Rogue says nothing, Nordic Spirit’s FAQ no longer covers pouches, and on! has no reachable first-party ingredient page.

Why is maltitol in a pouch if it is not there to sweeten it?

Bulk. ZYN lists it under fillers, a Swedish Match patent puts maltitol and microcrystalline cellulose together at roughly 84% of the filling by dry weight, and Swedish law permits the sugar alcohols in snus only for uses other than sweetening.

Does maltitol come from wheat?

I could not source that. The EU specification for maltitol names no botanical origin — it defines maltitol chemically and defines maltitol syrup as “A mixture consisting of mainly maltitol with sorbitol and hydrogenated oligo- and polysaccharides” made by hydrogenating high maltose-content glucose syrup, and stops there. The law never says what the glucose syrup was made from. Are nicotine pouches gluten-free? goes into what that leaves open.

Can a nicotine pouch poison a dog?

Yes, but through nicotine, not xylitol. On the thresholds above, a whole pouch cannot reach the hypoglycaemia dose for even a small dog on xylitol alone.

Sources

• Mallock-Ohnesorg N, Rinaldi S, et al. “Oral nicotine pouches with an aftertaste? Part 1: screening and initial toxicological assessment of flavorings and other ingredients.” Archives of Toxicology 2023;97(9):2357–2369. PMC10404176. Funded by BfR intramural funding, SFP Grant no. 1322-772; authors declare no conflict of interest.
• Jabba SV, Silinski P, Yang AY, Ouyang W, Jordt SE. “Artificial Sweeteners in US-Marketed Oral Nicotine Pouch Products: Correlation With Nicotine Contents and Effects on Product Preference.” Nicotine & Tobacco Research 2026;28(2):223–229. PMID 39656927. Funded by NIDA (R56DA055996, R01DA060884), NIH, FDA Center for Tobacco Products; no financial disclosures reported.
• Han DH, et al. Double-blind randomised sensory experiment on nicotine strength and pH in oral nicotine pouches, Addiction 2026. PMID 42159066. One author reports a Pfizer research grant and advisory work for Johnson & Johnson and Kenvue outside this work.
• Azzopardi D, Brown E, Meichanetzidis F, Fiebelkorn S, Haswell LE, Hardie G, McEwan M. Journal of Clinical Pharmacology 2026;66(1):e70090. PMID 40781988. Funded by BAT (Investments) Ltd; all authors were BAT employees at the time of the study.
• Alizadehgharib S, Lehrkinder A, Alshabeeb A, Lingström P. “Single-use and six-week effects of a non-tobacco nicotine pouch on dental plaque characteristics.” BMC Oral Health 2026;26(1):623. PMID 41877126. Funding and study material from Swedish Match AB.
• Daneshian M, Fredriksson L, Skott P, Garming Legert K. Cross-sectional study of nicotine pouch users, Oral Diseases 2026. PMID 42384425. No conflict-of-interest statement appears in the record.
• Maloney SF, et al. Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology 2024;32(5):588–603. PMID 38815111. No conflict-of-interest statement appears in the record.
• Bagdas D, et al. Nicotine & Tobacco Research 2026;28(2):242–250. PMID 40097606.
• EFSA, re-evaluation of acesulfame K (E 950), published 30 April 2025. efsa.europa.eu.
• EFSA, re-evaluation of sucralose (E 955), published 16 February 2026. efsa.europa.eu.
• Regulation (EC) No 178/2002, Article 2 (definition of food). Regulation (EC) No 1333/2008 on food additives, Articles 1 and 2. Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011, Annex III item 2.4 (added polyols), consolidated text. All via EUR-Lex.
• Commission Directive 2006/128/EC, specifications for E 965 maltitol and maltitol syrup, via legislation.gov.uk. Carried forward into Regulation (EU) No 231/2012, whose current text I could not retrieve.
• Livsmedelslag (2006:804) 3 §, Lag (2022:1257) om tobaksfria nikotinprodukter 7 §, and Förordning (2022:1263) 11 §, via riksdagen.se.
• LIVSFS 2024:2, 4 §, 5 §, 12 §, 14 § and the annex of permitted additives. Livsmedelsverket. Kontrollwiki article 887, last updated 13 August 2026.
• HSLF-FS 2023:24, 6 § and 7 §, Folkhälsomyndigheten.
• 21 U.S.C. §§ 321(rr), 387a(b) and 387d, via govinfo.gov.
• European Patent Office publication server: EP3087852A1 and EP4018846B1, Swedish Match North Europe AB.
• Manufacturer pages: ZYN US FAQ, VELO UK, Rogue FAQ, Nordic Spirit FAQ. All read 31 October 2026.
• US FDA, “Paws Off Xylitol; It’s Dangerous for Dogs”. fda.gov. Merck Veterinary Manual, “Xylitol Toxicosis in Dogs”.

Last verified: 31 October 2026.

Nicotine is addictive. No tobacco or nicotine product is safe, and completely stopping is the lowest-risk option. This site is for adults who already use nicotine — 21+ in the United States, 18+ or your local legal age elsewhere. Nothing here is medical advice.