Received this in my email this morning. Thought it might be of interest here as well. The link: http://atkins.com/Archive/2004/7/16-927112.html

The article:

Sugar Alcohols: A Low-Carb Consumer's Guideby Paul Bruns, Ph.D.
Not so long ago, anyone doing Atkins had to make a commitment to shun one of life’s little pleasures—sweets. To keep carb counts low and blood sugar in control, it was necessary to make a clean break from candy, cookies and ice cream. The good news is, those days are gone.

Advances in food science technology have made it easier and more enjoyable than ever to do Atkins. In fact, I can’t think of a category of traditionally high-carbohydrate foods for which there isn’t now a low-carb substitute. While this new class of food products has no doubt made it easier to enjoy a plate of pasta, blueberry muffin, chocolate bar or bowl of ice cream, to follow the Atkins Nutritional ApproachTM properly, these items should not replace healthful, whole foods. This is the foundation upon which Atkins is built, and it will never change, no matter how many new and improved low-carb products are developed.

And there’s no question: The array of low-carb products will continue to grow and get better. Thanks to constant evolutions in technology, you can count on the fact that substitutes for high-carb foods will become more and more like the things they imitate—in flavor and appearance.

In particular, food scientists have made great progress with a group of compounds known as polyols, or sugar alcohols. You’ve probably seen this term on low-carb product labels and read about it in The Atkins Essentials and The Atkins Shopping Guide as well as on atkins.com. Sugar alcohols are used to sweeten all kinds of low-carb candies, baked goods, sauces and syrups. They have nothing to do with alcohol, as we know it—ethanol (also known as ethyl alcohol) gets you tipsy; sugar alcohols don’t contain ethanol, but they happen to fall into the same chemical category. In fact, the way to tell if something is an alcohol is to look for the suffix “-ol.”

Sugar alcohols occur naturally in many foods, but they can also be manufactured from virtually any plant that contains carbohydrates. The process begins in much the same way that other sugars are manufactured. Because of its abundance, corn is the source of most sugars in the United States (think corn syrup), and fructose is the type of sugar extracted from corn. To make sugar alcohols, the process goes a step further, altering the fructose in a way that retains its sweetness but vastly reduces its impact on blood sugar. Sugar alcohols also have no more than half the calories of the carbohydrates they are replacing. A gram of carbohydrate typically has four calories, whereas a gram of sugar alcohol has two or less.

At Atkins, we primarily use three types of sugar alcohols in our products: maltitol, sorbitol and isomalt (isomalt is a mixture of sorbitol and mannitol). These particular sugar alcohols are about half to three-quarters as sweet tasting as table sugar (sucrose), and we use them in our confectionary products because in this context they behave most like sugar. They also tend to cause the fewest gastrointestinal (GI) side effects.

All foods containing sugar alcohols, however, should be consumed in moderation because of their potential for GI complaints, including gas, cramping and diarrhea. Sensitivity to these effects varies tremendously from person to person; some are very sensitive to even small amounts of sugar alcohols, while others seem impervious to the unpleasant symptoms. Also, over time, people seem to develop an increasing tolerance to sugar alcohols—in the same way that the body can become accustomed to eating beans without GI effects. A general rule of thumb, however, is to stick to no more than two to three servings, or no more than 25 grams of sugar alcohols, per day.

You may be wondering why we don’t simply use Splenda® (sucralose) or another replacement sweetener in our Atkins brand confections, especially in light of the potential for such side effects. Artificial sweeteners are 300 to 600 times sweeter than sugar. Most sugar alcohols, on the other hand, are significantly less sweet than sugar. However, if you’ve ever made candy at home, you know that sugar actually plays a more important role in the process than just making candy taste sweet. Sugar often helps make up the substance of a food. For example, a chocolate bar is basically composed of sugar, fat and flavoring. If you simply added a pinch of artificial sweetener to some oil and cocoa powder, you’d end up with a brown puddle! It’s the sugar that gives a chocolate bar its structure. Another example is hard candy, which is made almost entirely of sugar. Sugar alcohols act like sugar in that they, too, can give candy its structure.

When sugar alcohols are used in other foods, such as sauces and syrups, they provide what’s referred to in the food science world as “mouth feel.” In other words, if a syrup is made without sugar or sugar alcohols, it will be slimy and lacking in body. Sugar alcohols give such foods a more pleasing texture.

One final clarification about sugar alcohols: On product labels, you may have seen that glycerine is subtracted from the total carb count along with sugar alcohols to yield the grams of Net Carbs (the only carbs you need to count on Atkins). Glycerine has the same properties as sugar alcohols and is metabolized in the body in the same way, but it is not as sweet. Although it’s categorized as a sugar alcohol in some countries (and called glycerol), it is not considered one in the United States.

Finally, if you’ve ever been curious about the safety of these compounds, you can rest easy: All sugar alcohols commonly used in food have undergone extensive and rigorous safety testing, and data has been shared with the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which has granted sugar alcohols the legal status of substances that are “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS). What this means is that the FDA has no concerns about the safety of sugar alcohols.

Not everyone responds the same way to sugar alcohols. As stated in the forthcoming Atkins Diabetes Revolution, because of individual differences in response, people with Type 2 Diabetes should check their blood sugar 90 minutes after eating a food containing sugar alcohols. If an abnormal elevation results it is best to avoid sugar alcohols until the metabolism improves.

So remember, these tasty sweets made with sugar alcohols should be eaten sparingly and enjoyed as they were designed to be: as occasional treats. The majority of your daily meals should consist of nutrient-dense, whole foods—the same advice you’ve been hearing from Atkins for more than three decades.

Dr. Bruns, senior manager, scientific affairs, holds a B.S. in agriculture and an M.S. in animal physiology and dairy chemistry from the University of Vermont. He also holds a Ph.D. in food science and nutrition from Cornell University.