What if a pinch of blue powder could give you the sweet tea you love with less added sugar? That’s the appeal of Sea Sugar, a sugar alternative made with blue spirulina, algae-derived minerals, trehalose, and a sweet protein from a West African fruit. The company says a little goes a long way, which is good news for anyone whose morning coffee has slowly turned into a dessert with a lid.

The most practical potential benefit is cutting back on the sugar you add every day while keeping the flavor you enjoy. The other ingredients raise some interesting questions of their own. Here’s what the research on trehalose tells us, what the blue spirulina contributes, and where a pinch might make a difference in your routine.

1 It could help you cut back on added sugar without giving up sweet tea

Start with something you drink often. Say you put 2 teaspoons of table sugar in your iced tea every afternoon. That’s about 8 grams of added sugar. If you enjoy the same tea with a small serving of Sea Sugar in place of those 2 teaspoons, you’ll have used less added sugar. Do that every afternoon and you’ve changed a daily habit without having to break up with sweet tea.

Coffee, lemonade, and plain yogurt are good places to see whether the swap works for you. You can start with a tiny amount, stir, and taste. If you’re using it in a flavored latte or a smoothie, remember that syrups, sweetened creamers, and juices can bring their own sugar to the party. The biggest difference comes from replacing the sweetener you were already using.

2 A fruit protein delivers a lot of sweetness in a little pinch

The ingredient that helps explain Sea Sugar’s intensity is thaumatin, a protein extracted from the West African katemfe fruit. An FDA-filed notice describes thaumatin itself as roughly 3,000 times sweeter than table sugar by weight. The finished blend is much less concentrated than that. Its maker describes it as up to 30 times sweeter than sugar, depending on how it’s used and how you perceive the taste.

Thaumatin can take a little longer to taste sweet, and the sweetness can linger. Give your first sip a moment before you reach for another pinch. There’s a fine line between “this coffee is pretty good” and “I’ve made pancake syrup.”

3 Trehalose has some interesting blood sugar research

Trehalose is a sugar made of 2 glucose molecules joined together. During digestion, an enzyme in your small intestine can split them apart. In a small Nutrition Journal study, 20 healthy adults drank 25 grams of trehalose on one occasion and 25 grams of glucose on another. Their blood glucose and insulin responses were lower after trehalose than after glucose. That was a comparison between those 2 ingredients at a specific dose. A serving of the Sea Sugar blend weighs about 0.3 grams in total.

There’s also a 12-week pilot study in 40 adults with type 2 diabetes. Researchers found no statistically significant difference in fasting blood sugar or A1C between the trehalose and comparison groups. The brand’s research page distinguishes studies on individual ingredients from clinical research on the finished product. For your morning coffee, the clearest change you can measure is how much sugar you leave out. If you count carbohydrates to manage diabetes, use the serving size and consider the whole drink or meal.

4 Blue spirulina brings color, and the mineral amounts matter

The blue comes from phycocyanin, the main pigment in spirulina extract. According to the company, you may see a slight tint in pale foods. In plain yogurt, that might be fun. In coffee, you’ll probably have to squint.

The brand also highlights calcium, magnesium, and potassium from its marine ingredients. To see whether those minerals make a meaningful contribution to your diet, look for how many milligrams you get per serving. That’s especially important with a product you use by the pinch. If the amounts aren’t listed, there’s no way to tell from the mineral names alone how much that serving adds to your day.

5 The tiny serving helps explain the zero on the label

How can a product list trehalose and still advertise zero sugar? The serving size gives you a clue. The company says a 70-gram pouch contains about 233 servings, which works out to roughly 0.3 grams of the whole blend per serving. U.S. nutrition labeling rules generally allow less than 0.5 grams of total sugars per serving to be declared as 0 grams on the Nutrition Facts panel. The number is about the amount in that serving.

That also explains why it helps to think in servings when you’re comparing sweeteners. A pinch in your tea and several pinches in a pitcher are different amounts. And when a recipe calls for a cup of sugar, sweetness is only one job that sugar does. It also affects how cookies spread and how the edges crisp. If you want to bake with Sea Sugar, a recipe developed for it gives you a better starting point than your grandmother’s cookie recipe, which probably has enough opinions already.

6 The best test is whether you’d happily use it every day

At the company’s listed price of $79 for about 233 servings, Sea Sugar comes out to roughly 34 cents per serving, before tax or shipping. At 1 serving a day, that’s about $10 a month. If sweet tea or coffee is where most of your added sugar comes from and you genuinely enjoy the swap, that might be a price you’re happy to pay. If you use sweetener once in a blue moon, a $79 pouch might sit in the pantry long enough to become part of the decor.

A good place to start is the drink you make on autopilot. Pay attention to how much sugar you put in it and how sweet you actually want it to taste. You might enjoy it with a pinch of Sea Sugar, or discover you’re just as happy with half your usual spoonful. Either way, you learn something useful about a habit you repeat every day.

Small changes are easier to keep when you still look forward to what’s in your cup. If a blue sweetener helps you cut back on added sugar and you enjoy the taste, that’s a benefit you can actually put to use.

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