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.
The authors caution that their study was a laboratory study, conducted on cells, and larger studies in people are needed.
Ok, nice to know, moving on.
There are other studies using humans, see https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/erythritol-cardiovascular-events
This sugar substitute is going to be the asbestos of sweeteners in the next few decades. And I find it remarkable it is in so many foods.
Awesome. Drink sugar free energy drink, have stroke.
I’ve never seen an energy drink with erythritol
_
I took a look at the two most famous colas and two fake colas, and the only sweeteners I was able to find were aspartame, acesulfame K, and sucralose. No sign of erythritol. I wonder if I’ve ever even seen a beverage with that stuff in it. However, I have seen bags of it sold in supermarkets, so apparently it isn’t restricted in that sense.
Where I am at (Texas) I find it in many sugar free yoghurts
I’m beginning to think this must be one of those EU things. I couldn’t find a single yogurt like that in my local supermarket.
Reading more of the comments here, from Spain and Denmark, it seems it is in other food items in the EU; perhaps there are better regulations with yogurt?
No sign of erythritol.
It’s significantly more common in baked goods (because it’s stable under oven temperatures) and extremely more common in “fitness” branded alternatives like low calorie yogurt, low calorie peanut butter, and so on.
I don’t consume many sugar-free products, except Coke Zero Sugar. Not Coke Zero, but Coke Zero SUGAR. They are two separate products (which taste significantly different), and even servers in restaurants often don’t know the difference. They’ve got to be phasing out the Zero in favor of the Zero SUGAR, became ZS tastes far better.
Anyhoo, I’ve been wondering about the artificial sweetener they must be using for them, and now I’m wondering if it’s this stuff. Your post seems to indicate that I’m in the clear.
Just read the label or look it up… What the fuck is this “I’m just gonna decide on it being this way without even lifting a finger even though all the info is readily available”? If it is that sweetener you’re great proof that it does indeed damage brain cells and if not…then you’re just this dumb naturally.
Not dumb, just don’t care. One advantage to getting old is that the dangerous stuff that takes years to kill you won’t have the time to get you before you die anyway, so you can go wild. If it tastes better, I’ll drink it. It’ll kill me in 30 years? Yeah, but I’ll be dead in 20, and it tastes good, so I don’t care.
I have seen a few people who are similar to that become old; struggling for decades with damage done to their bodies when younger.
I am not judging others , just remarking the survival rate is high
aspartame
ethrthiol isnt that common, its more associated with stevia substitute, it has well known side effects of causing GI problems in sensitive people.(might be useful for constipate dpeople.)
Ah, yes, it must not be common just because you randomly looked at two products. This is like saying “I just looked up two of the most famous people ever and both are white so therefore it means that non-white famous people don’t exist”.
Taken from top result on google, so obviously not the best source, with that said
Seeing “sugar alcohols” in the ingredient list may be the only clue that erythritol is present in the food.
So you can’t necessarily even find it without some serious digging, so it doesn’t matter if they picked 2 or 100 examples, if they don’t clearly state it anyway.
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Why not just say, “Popular sugar substitute, erythritol…” in the title?
I mean we both know the answer is for clicks
Add the fucking shit to the headline: Spoiler: it’s Erythritol
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.
So what brand is this stuff sold under so that I can speedrun that stroke?
Truvia in the US.
Cool, I hope they sell it by the pound.
In America, it’s usually branded as “sugar alcohol”, and is found in many sweeteners as an additive.
Don’t the food labels go into any more detail than that?
Here in Denmark I’ve seen nearly every sugar free ice-cream use it. There’s also a number of chewing gums too.
Maybe the ultimate answer will turn out to be JUST EAT LESS FUCKING SUGAR.
What even uses this stuff? I only see Acesulfam-k, Sucralose, Stevia.
Edit: i’m european.
Brand names in the US are Swerve and Truvía. I don’t think it gets added to much in junk food factories, but it is available in packets for tea and such.
Here in Denmark I’ve seen that substance used in gum and sugar free ice-cream.
Lot of things. Here in Spain I have a big box of sweetener little packages that have “STEVIA” la el big but it’s 96% eritriol and only 3% stevia.
It’s commonly sold mixed with stevia or monk fruit
I fucking knew it, this shit made me feel weird all the time.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 :(
Meh…. It’s a research from the US. Let’s wait till more reputable sources confirm the studies.
fair, but more reputable countries may not have exposed their populations to this poison to begin with
UC Boulder sends like a reputable source to me.
Damn it it’s in Celsius. Glad I don’t drink it often.
Just another thing to check labels for, none of the drinks I have contain it which is good
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.
Interesting thing about most sugar substitutes is they actually kill mouth & gut microbiome.
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.
Any evidence for this in Stevia or Monk Fruit?
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
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 is different from erythritol, but both are “sugar alcohols” so further study would be needed
xylitol does have beneficial affects against bacteria
I believe that is just because chewing gum increases salivation which helps keep bacteria in check
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).
ethrythiol is often mixed with these two, but there are product with solely stevia in it if your interested.
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’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
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 thought xylitol was good for gut biome
We have mouth/gut biome that eats sugar? Seems weird.
