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+--- Thread: Popular non-nutritional sweetener linked to heart problems (erythritol) (/thread-13780.html)
Popular non-nutritional sweetener linked to heart problems (erythritol) - C C - Mar 7, 2023
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/trouble-erythritol
INTRO: I wrote a few months ago about a surprising finding with some food sweeteners. Sucralose and saccharin (but not aspartame or stevia) seemed to bring on impaired glucose tolerance, which is not something that you would have expected from molecules with none of sugar’s metabolic and nutritional effects. That was certainly worth thinking about, but now there are more disturbing results to add to it.
This new paper reports that another widely used non-nutritional sweetener (erythritol) appears to be associated with cardiovascular problems. That’s quite a surprise, because erythritol itself has been considered very safe indeed. It’s been used for decades as a sweetener, and is approved for that use in over sixty countries.
To the tongue, it’s about 60% as sweet as sucrose (table sugar), which makes it easier to substitute than some of the far-sweeter alternatives, which then need to be bulked up to keep recipes from being thrown off (and those fillers themselves often cause the recipes to be adjusted). But it has basically no caloric value for the human diet.
Chemically, it’s part of a group of “sugar alcohols”... (MORE - details)
RE: Popular non-nutritional sweetener linked to heart problems (erythritol) - Magical Realist - Mar 8, 2023
Having been recently diagnosed prediabetic, I rely heavily on artificial sweetners in my soda drink, coffee creamer, ice cream, cookies, and nutritional shakes. Most seem to be sweetened with splenda, which is ok as far as I know.