Quality matters
The most important thing to consider when purchasing a monk fruit sweetener the quality of the ingredients.
Like most people, you’re purchasing a monk fruit sweetener because you care about your health. It’s counter productive to purchase an inexpensive monk fruit sweetener if you’re potentially exposing yourself to pesticides, herbicides and perhaps even a product that doesn’t actually contain monk fruit!
I recommend looking for the most stringent and enforced organic certification available: USDA certified organic.
What is USDA certified organic?
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) operates a special section to provide organic certification to suppliers. You can visit their website here: https://www.usda.gov/topics/organic
In order to get and maintain a USDA organic certification a company needs to comply with detailed standards that span from planting, harvesting, processing, to storage and shipping. At each step the producer is subject to third party audits to ensure compliance.
If a product is not compliant the producer will face financial punishment and even up to 20 years of jail time!
No other organic certification comes even close.
Most other organic certifications are ‘self certified’ with no audits and no checks. These kind of certifications are designed to make the consumer feel safe and incur no additional costs or obligations on the manufacturer.
Always make sure to look for this logo:
What monk fruit sweetener do I recommend?
I recommend the only USDA certified organic sweetener that I buy for my own family. It’s a small brand called ‘The Grinning Monk‘. Their product looks like this (from their website):
It is 100% USDA certified organic and tastes better than any of the other ones I’ve tried. Please let me know in the comments if you like this brand as much as I do!