There is a lot of sugar free candy and gum out there. What if it didn’t have any sweetener at all? No Saccharin, no Stevia, no Sucralose, no Aspartame, no Ace K. Nothing.
All the other ingredients the same.
What would that taste like?
If you’re ruling out natural sweeteners as well, I’d imagine the whole class of foods we refer to as ‘sweets’ wouldn’t exist as they would probably be pretty bitter (think unsweetened chocolate), sour (ascorbic acid) or bland. I’d imagine we just wouldn’t have candy to begin with.
I’m not talking about those sweeteners not existing. I’m talking about some weird confectioner (think Cosmo Kramer) just not putting any sweetener in the mix when making his “candy”. What would my sugar free Jelly Bellies taste like with no sweetener in them at all?
Not sure about your Jelly Bellies, but I’m imagining unsweetened Lemonheads right about now. Yowzah!
Crap.
But seriously, I suppose it would depend on what you use in place of the sweetener. Malitol is the main ingredient in sugar free jelly bellies, assuming they’re made the same way as other candy, it’s not that it contains malitol, it IS malitol. Again, that’s assuming sugar free candy is made the same way as candy with sugar.
If you just left it out, it would be a ball of starch coated with wax along with a bit of flavor and some coloring.
Unsweetened gelatin is fairly tasteless, but if pushed to describe it, you’d probable say ‘glue’ same for most confectionery/food gums and indeed starches such as those used in soft liquorice and jelly beans.
Glue.
Another thing to consider is that some hard candies are made by boiling and cooling sugar, specifically. Those candies are sugar with a little color/flavor. So if you left out the sugar, you would have a small pinch of powder or oily drop where the candy would have been created, depending on the flavor.
Most of the time sugar is not only a taste ingredient it’s also a primary structural and texture ingredient. The large majority of what we consider to be “candy” type foods are primarily sugar. “Sugar-free” candies are mainly gums or gels where they are using non-sugar sweeteners.
Re non sweetener “taste” re gum chew on a rubber band. Re gels make some double thick Jello unsweetened gelatin. Re hard candy suck on a glass pebble. It’s all kind of boring and pointless re taste.
You can always use miracle fruit to make the sour taste sweet! without adding sweeteners.