By Roy Newlan, founder Last updated 18/08/2026
Settl tastes like passionfruit and carries almost no sugar, which raises a fair question: what's doing the sweetening? The answer is thaumatin, a natural protein most people have never heard of. This page covers the sugar numbers on the panel, what thaumatin is, and why we chose it over stevia.
Is Settl sugar free?
Each 9g scoop carries less than 0.1g of sugars, and the nutrition panel reads 0.1g of sugars per 100g. The Australian food standards code doesn't actually define a "sugar free" claim. What it defines is "low sugar", set at no more than 5g per 100g for a solid food. Settl sits at 0.1g, fifty times under that line.
So the honest answer is yes in every practical sense, with the panel to back it. There is no added sugar of any kind. The trace that registers comes along with the natural ingredients, not from anything we put in to sweeten it. No stevia, no monk fruit, no artificial sweeteners, no colours either. The full excipient list is three items long: citric acid for the tartness, natural passionfruit flavour, and 30mg of thaumatin.
What is thaumatin?
Thaumatin is a sweet-tasting protein extracted from the katemfe fruit, a plant that grows in West Africa. It is roughly 2,000 to 3,000 times sweeter than sugar by weight, so the whole scoop needs just 30mg of it.
Because it's a protein, not a sugar, it contributes to the protein line on the nutrition panel rather than the sugars line, and at 30mg its contribution to anything is close to nil. In Australia it's a permitted food additive, number 957 on the FSANZ additive list, and it has been used in foods for decades. It isn't a lab invention. Local communities in West Africa have used the katemfe fruit to sweeten food for far longer than it's had an additive number.
How is thaumatin different from stevia?
Both are natural, plant-derived and far sweeter than sugar. The difference is in what they are and how they finish. Stevia is a group of glycosides from a leaf, and its known weakness is a bitter, liquorice-like aftertaste. Thaumatin is a protein from a fruit, and its sweetness arrives slowly and finishes clean.
| Sugar (sucrose) | Stevia (steviol glycosides) | Thaumatin | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | A carbohydrate, from cane or beet | Glycosides from the stevia leaf | A protein from the katemfe fruit |
| Sweetness vs sugar, by weight | 1x, the baseline | Roughly 200 to 300x | Roughly 2,000 to 3,000x |
| Aftertaste | None | Bitter or liquorice-like for many people | Clean, with a slow onset |
| Amount needed per Settl scoop | Several grams, if we used it | Tens of milligrams | 30mg |
| Contribution to the sugars line | All of it | None | None, it counts as protein |
| FSANZ additive number | Not an additive | 960 | 957 |
Why did Settl choose thaumatin over stevia?
Taste. Settl is something you drink every single night, and a nightly drink cannot carry an aftertaste you learn to tolerate. Stevia's bitter finish is the most common complaint about naturally sweetened drink powders, and we didn't want it anywhere near the last thing you taste before bed.
Thaumatin's profile suits the formula too. Its sweetness builds gently rather than hitting up front, which lets the passionfruit lead and rounds off the edges of the actives. Some of those need the help. Magnesium compounds are naturally bitter, and there's a fair load of minerals in each scoop. Glycine even chips in on its own: the biggest active in the formula is an amino acid that tastes slightly sweet, so the thaumatin is finishing a job the formula partly does itself.
Does it matter that a sleep drink is low in sugar?
For a drink you have right before bed, yes. A sugary drink at 10pm is a small dose of energy at exactly the wrong time, and it's a habit that compounds nightly over a 30-day tub.
Settl's whole design points the other way. The scoop is built to close the day, not extend it: no sugar to speak of, no caffeine anywhere in the seven actives, and no melatonin either. The same thinking shows up across the formula, like choosing a measured chamomile extract over a variable teabag. Every choice in the glass is meant to be one you can repeat every night without a downside accumulating.
What's actually in the scoop, then?
Of the 9g scoop, 7.94g is the seven actives and just over 1g is the three excipients: citric acid, passionfruit flavour and 30mg of thaumatin. Nothing else.
Sugars under 0.1g per serve, and the panel's full breakdown, ingredient by ingredient, is on the ingredients page. If the clean label is what brought you here, the doses will hold your attention longer.
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Cheers, Roy