Erythritol, a widely used sugar substitute found in many low-carb and sugar-free products, may not be as harmless as once believed. New research from the University of Colorado Boulder reveals that even small amounts of erythritol can harm brain blood vessel cells, promoting constriction, clotting, and inflammation—all of which may raise the risk of stroke.
This seems interesting because they did some research in the actual mechanism that could create a cause-effect relation. Still need to be repeated to justify legal changes but that’s a good start.
Much better than these “correlation” studies that say nothing. Like the ones saying “people who doesn’t drink any alcohol die sooner that people who drink a cup of wine each day”, that’s totally faulty for a lot of evident reasons. And until now most artificial sweeteners studies were like that “people who use artificial sweeteners tend to have more health issues”, like with the drink is reasonable to assume and consider that people who do such dietary changes is more likely to already have an underlying health issue that they are trying to cope with and it’s obviously more in risk that healthy people that doesn’t feel the need to control their diet.
As I said this study seems a little more promising as they did research on the actual mechanisms on which the health issues may happen. I hope it gets repeated enough times and, if needed, the product would be banned or properly labeled.
I always told my buddy who was dieting in college that getting fake sugar sodas isn’t the solution, it’s to stop drinking soda…
Not even that, find something healthy that scratches the itch. Your body indicates it wants energy (unless your addicted in which case its the microbiome or something), get it some berries or throw them in some water with lemon juice
I’ve found that a lot of times when I’m craving something sweet, what I actually want is water. It seems my brain associates sweetness (such as from fruit) with hydration. When I can, I’ll have some fruit. But when fruit’s unavailable, I know I just have to drink more water.
Maybe the ultimate answer will turn out to be JUST EAT LESS FUCKING SUGAR.
Well shit I use it daily for my coffee and home-made milk tea. Reading all this stuff coming to light about sugar substitutes is gonna make me just go back to regular sugar or maybe coconut sugar, and I’ll just control my intake.
You can use Stevia. It’s a natural product, zero calories. There is a more expensive option in monk fruit as well. I live on Stevia. It’s easily available in groceries and stores, and reasonably priced too.
I do use Stevia. The thing is, all the stevia products I see at the grocery store are laced with erythritol. Does the product you consume exclusively use stevia only?
I buy stand alone stevia product, and never buy drinks or baked goods in the store. I make them myself at home. I have not been able to find stevia-made drinks or foods like ice cream here so I just don’t consume them. It’s summer, and I’d love to have some ice cream once in a while but I don’t.
Sorry, I meant I buy stand-alone stevia but all the options like Truvia and the store brand variant have erythritol in their ingredients. Which brand do you use?
I use generic 100% stevia. It is a shame branded ones contain erythritol. You should be able to get them on amazon if you can’t find it in a store.
not all of them, sweetleaf doesnt have any of the substitute. there are others.
stevia is not a natural product. there is indeed a plant named stevia and it can be used as a sweetener. Stevia that you buy at the store is chemically produced and is derived through a complex process that uses petroleum based chemistry to extract the chemicals from the plant.
raw sugar has far less environmental impact than buying stevia. if you truly want a sugar alternative grow your own sugar beets. it’s literally raw sugar(sucrose).
if you truly want a sugar alternative grow your own sugar beets. it’s literally raw sugar(sucrose).
So it’s literally not a sugar alternative
Honestly, I’ve had better luck just getting higher quality tea and cutting sugar from morning beverages entirely. (I don’t drink coffee, but low quality teas tend to become bitter, which required sugar. Higher quality teas never become bitter)
These days, I’m cutting sugar across the board. Shredded wheat with frozen raspberries tastes better than honey bunches of oats anyways. And the sugar I’m eating is pretty much just for fun, like pie or ice cream. No reason to accidentally ingest 28g of sugar in a breakfast bar that doesn’t even taste that good.
Never got why coffee needs sugar. Its supposed to be bitter. If its too bitter then you may add milk. But sugar? That doesn’t belong in coffee.
Add the fucking shit to the headline: Spoiler: it’s Erythritol
I fucking knew it, this shit made me feel weird all the time.
Erythritol makes my entire mouth feel like it’s on fire as soon as it touches my tongue. My body did me a favor on this one.
you seem sensitive, ive taken stevia subistitute with erythiol, it never caused it. some people have gi problems with it, but it doesnt really bother me for tha tone. there are products with pure stevia in it(but warning pure is not as sweet as the substitutes though, so you might have to use more.
If you can, avoid any fake sugar. I love science, but science sugar tricking your brain that something is sweet feels wrong.
Or not. I’m not a nutritionist I don’t know anything about anything.
Oh I definitely do the best I can, but it’s difficult to avoid sometimes, for instance finding a protein bar without any of that stuff and with good other macros is quite a chore. But I opt for real sugar whenever I possibly can.
Thats because it is wrong, youve hit the nail on the head. Anything that is sweet activates certain receptors on your tongue, and that stimulates the production of insulin. That insulin is then going to travel your body looking for sugars to break down. Thing is, insulin only breaks down sugars, not artificial sweeteners. So its going to break down sugars elsewhere in your body or leave free insulin in your blood. That fucks you up good and leads to diabetes.
ALL ARTIFICAL SWEETENERS ARE BAD, unless you already have diabetes.
Actually you could be a nutritionist if you call yourself one since it’s not a legally protected term. Dietitian is the actual one that is a protected term.
Ah great then hell yeah Im a nutritionist I learnt food brain stuff.
erythritol was always a not so favored ingredient for me due to the weird cooling mouthfeel and GI effects
now if it turns out that allulose is bad for you, I’m going to be SO UPSET.
Whatever. They all taste like carcinogenic plastic side product. Enjoy your swill.
You seem personally upset about other people drinking low-sugar drinks 😂
Well, actually I’m upset that it’s harder to find good selection of regular sugar drinks. Even regular Cola and Pepsi has replaced half of it’s sugar with sweeteners and you can taste it. You have to go to a bigger market so you can find some Mexican cane sugar cola, but that has never had the same taste. Not bad, but not the same.
As long as they don’t find a problem with maltitol. I just discovered “low-sugar” ice creams made using the stuff and they’re amazing
It’s not zero sugar like erythritol, and it’s not as sweet, but I like it
Why not just say, “Popular sugar substitute, erythritol…” in the title?
I mean we both know the answer is for clicks
God damn it, I’ve been using this a lot. It’s almost flavorless except sweet and doesn’t take much to sweeten a large amount of water. I’ve been using the Truvia packets one in a large bottle of water with 1/8 of a teaspoon of crystalized lime or orange ( from a brewer supply co). All the other ones seem to have a chemical aftertaste to me.
Oh well, the second best time to stop is now I suppose.
You probably weren’t taking in enough to do any real damage, but even so - good idea to stop now.
I’m eyeing my waterbottle full of it right now
gonna have to dump it out, super sad, I’m almost out of crystalized lime :(
to all of you who worry about this stuff: do you drive? do you walk or live next to roads? do you make sure there’s a low concentration of CO2 in any room you’re in?
If not, those things are way more worrisome than any sweetener unless you chug 50 liters of soda per day.
Interesting thing about most sugar substitutes is they actually kill mouth & gut microbiome.
Any evidence for this in Stevia or Monk Fruit?
I also don’t have any studies, but I am aware of xylitol being used in toothpaste, chewing gum, etc., usually with the “assists in the prevention of tooth decay” type of tagline.
xylitol does have beneficial affects against bacteria
I believe that is just because chewing gum increases salivation which helps keep bacteria in check
Xylitol is different from erythritol, but both are “sugar alcohols” so further study would be needed
Erithrol is the sweetener derived from monkfruit.
Comes from corn usually
I did a couple searches and I didn’t see that mentioned. In my searches I read that monk fruit so like 250x sweeter than sugar, so erythritol is used as a “bulking agent” for monk fruit. So I guess they use it to dilute monk fruit and make it more manageable? Idk, I’ve been consuming both for quite a while and this is news to me, going to have to learn more about both.
That makes sense.
Stevia is often blended with it but only lists in the ingredients.
it’s also often blended with dextrose which is SUPER annoying if you’re trying to do specialized baking or diets
I don’t know about baking, but avoiding random other stuff blended in is why I get my stevia as a liquid – the one I use only has water, stevia extract, and a couple of preservatives.
It’s probably a lot more manageable as a liquid. I had powdered pure stevia and it would get EVERYWHERE and contaminate random things with horrible levels of sweetness. I think I’ll get a liquid next time I need it (e.g. for rounding out allulose to make up for its 70% sweetness compared to sucrose)
its either dextrose, or maltodextrin, which are basically sugar with extra steps.
I’ve checked store brands
www.fooducate.com/product/Sweet-Additions-Stevia/7D892B72-6914-11E1-AFF9-1231380C18FB
https://tools.myfooddata.com/nutrition-facts/373190/wt1
https://www.fooducate.com/product/Kroger-Stevia-Blend/B5C6A580-5826-11E2-A40C-1231381A0463
ETA: in the raw lists dextrose
No. I don’t have any studies on hand, but the data that I’m aware of says that stevia is one of the small few that actually helps your gut biome. However, too high of a quantity can lead to other issues (I think related to the heart).
here’s a pretty good meta-analysis I found of various studies of stevia affecting bacteria in vitro and in vivo
the conclusion this paper comes to seems to be “depends on the species and strain of bacteria”
so just like pretty much anything you eat then.
yes, but I think it warrants further study. some GI issues are related to one or just a few bacterial strains being unbalanced, so it could be extremely useful in treating gut microbiome imbalances to know which strains are negatively impacted by specific sweeteners
conversely if we found any specific sweetener to have a bacteriostatic or bactericidal effect on a strain that is pathological when overly populated (e.g. H. pylori), that could be a super easy way for some people to prevent chronic flare-ups
ethrythiol is often mixed with these two, but there are product with solely stevia in it if your interested.
I thought xylitol was good for gut biome
That seems like an impressively blanket statement when there’s literally dozens of sugar substitutes that are all wildly chemically different. Insane that all of them would kill your mouth and gut microbiome even when they often work in fundamentally different ways.
We have mouth/gut biome that eats sugar? Seems weird.
Damn it it’s in Celsius. Glad I don’t drink it often.
Meh…. It’s a research from the US. Let’s wait till more reputable sources confirm the studies.
UC Boulder sends like a reputable source to me.
fair, but more reputable countries may not have exposed their populations to this poison to begin with
