Sugar Alcohol: Good or Bad

Hey guys. I just got an email asking about sugar alcohols, so I thought I would share the answer with you.

Q: Hi Dr. Sean! What's so good about fake sugar, and why does it have that horrible after taste? I don't understand why people would ruin their perfectly good coffee with several of those blue or pink packets. Also, why would people order a super-sized meal with a diet coke?

A: Fake sugar is the latest diet craze on the market. People love sweets and have been searching for ways to avoid the calories of simple sugars. Let’s start with the newest sugar alternatives on the market: the polyols (also known as sugar alcohols). Polyols are basically sweetening and bulking agents. They come from certain fruits and berries.

The good things about them are:

1. They taste almost like sugar.
2. They provide somewhere between 1/2 to 1/3 less calories than regular sugar.
3. Their conversion to glucose is far slower so they require little or no insulin to be metabolized and don’t cause sudden increases in blood sugar (thus useful for patients with diabetes).
4. They DO NOT promote tooth decay (FDA has approved a claim of “does not promote tooth decay” for sugar-free foods and beverages sweetened with polyols).
5. They add texture to food, retain moisture and prevent foods from browning when they are heated.

Common polyols include: mannitol, sorbitol, xylitol, lactitol, isomalt, maltitol, and hydrogenated starch hydrolysates (HSH). They can be found in candies, cookies, chewing gums, soft drinks, throat lozenges, toothpaste, and even mouthwash.

Now the bad things about them:

2. Gastrointestinal side effects such as bloating and diarrhea when eaten in excessive amounts.
3. Weight gain with overuse (as with everything else in life).
4. Large amounts increase blood sugars

Sugar Alcohols vs. artificial sweeteners:

Artificial sweeteners are your saccharin (Sweet and Low) and Aspartame (Equal and NutraSweet). The good thing about artificial sweeteners is that they contain zero calories vs. sugar alcohols with ~2.6 cal per gram. Another good thing is that artificial sweeteners do not raise blood sugars.

Here is a handy table from caloriecontrol.org that shows exactly how many calories you get from each of the polyols. 3.0 calories per gram hydrogenated starch hydrolysates. 2.6 calories per gram sorbitol. 2.4 calories per gram xylitol. 2.1 calories per gram maltitol. 2.0 calories per gram isomalt. 2.0 calories per gram lactitol. 1.6 calories per gram mannitol. 0.2 calories per gram erythritol

As for the last part of you question “why would people order a super-sized meal with a diet coke?”, your guess is as good as mine.