Sweet Wars - Equal Versus Great Value Calorie Free Sweetener

If you're an Equal sweetener user, you might want to give Great Value brand Calorie Free Sweetener a try. It contains the same ingredients and tastes the same as Equal, in my opinion, for a lot less money. Now I'm not saying that the Great Value Calorie Free Sweetener tastes like sugar. I would quickly lose credibility in trying to assert such a claim. But it does taste like Equal.

Like many women, I gave up sugared beverages in favor of a slimmer waistline long ago. Perhaps some men have joined in but it seems to be more widespread among women. Diet soft drinks and coffee sweetened with artificial sweeter are a part of many of our daily lives. When it comes to diet soda, I am a name brand girl all the way. Don't try to give me a store brand diet cola, I'd rather stay thirsty. For a while, I felt the same way about the sweetener used in my coffee. I was never a fan of the pink packets of Sweet & Low that my grandmother used. And I was already hooked on Equal when Splenda came on the market. I was an Equal fan all the way. An Equal abuser, according to my husband who refuses to place my order for a medium coffee with five Equal as he feels the use of such excess sweetener is embarrassing.

I continued using Equal in my coffee with reckless abandon until my husband and I realized that we were spending our children's college education at the local coffee shop. Good-bye coffee shop. Hello home brewed coffee. The adjustment wasn't as hard as I had expected since the packets of Equal were available in the grocery store. Then one day while shopping in Walmart I noticed the Great Value brand Calorie Free Sweetener next to the name brand Equal. The Great Value brand was less than half the price of the Equal brand so I decided to give it a try. Now, over a year later, I have never looked back. The Great Value brand Calorie Free Sweetener is now a staple in my house. Now I will admit that I have never tried the Great Value Calorie Free Sweetener or Equal in my cooking or in any recipe at all. But in coffee, I doubt anyone would be able to tell the difference between the two brands.

Equal and Great Value Calorie Free Sweetener contains the same ingredients: dextrose with maltodextrin and aspartame. They both come in blue packets. They both contain 0 calories per serving and 0g trans fat per serving. They both come in a box of 200 packets and they both claim that each packet is as sweet as 2 tsp of sugar. The only noticeable difference between Equal and Great Value brand Calorie Free Sweetener is the price. I paid $1.99 for 200 packets of the Great Value Calorie Free Sweetener and the same size box of Equal was $4.99! That's more than double the price. In fact, when I checked the prices of Equal at some other stores on line, I found that a box of 200 packets of Equal ranged in price from $7.49 to $10.49 a box! You can almost justify going back to the coffee shop if you're going to pay those kinds of prices!

So, if you're an Equal user and you'd like to save a little money, stop by Walmart and try their Great Value Calorie Free Sweetener. I'll make a bet you'll like it. Now you could save even more money by skipping the sweetener in your coffee altogether, or better yet, giving up coffee altogether. As for me, I can't handle the bitterness of my coffee without the sweetener and my family can't handle the bitterness of me without my coffee!