Ingestion of the Non-Nutritive Sweetener Erythritol, but Not Glucose, Enhances Platelet Reactivity and Thrombosis Potential in Healthy Volunteers

https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10....BAHA.124.321019
August 8, 2024 from the Cleveland Clinic.



Artificial sweeteners, sugar alcohols in particular, are always controversial. More fuel for the fire with this new study. Dr Westman's plan never allowed subtracting any sugar alcohol, so 1 tiny teaspoon has 4g carbs.

A very small amount sneaks into my diet with 1 scoop of protein powder, and a splash of sweetener in coffee, but making LC treats, cake, cookies, bread, cheesecake, with cups of this stuff, and fibers that have no nutrients, is not satiating, the fast track to cravings for sweets, binging and rapid regain…and now more evidence of clotting risk.

This is one instance where I'm glad the study was done on HEALTHY volunteers because it clearly shows an unfavorable result.

However, it would be nice if they'd conduct the study again on obese people.

Oh and diabetics.

Because what if the platelet problem in someone who is obese or diabetic is less of a problem than what glucose causes?

Perhaps still not a good idea, and of course it has to be better to simply avoid all those recipes that call for cups of the stuff in baking, but especially as those new to LC first start out, they will want "legal" treats.

This study of course only compared the effect of erythritol with glucose, and glucose won out as the safer alternative. But we know that glucose is not good for blood sugar levels. One hopes that they will compare the effect of other sweeteners, and make sure it's based on comparable sweetening power, not on physical amounts ingested, because non-nutritive sweeteners vary greatly in how much the same measurement sweetens foods: for instance, you might but a cup of sugar in a recipe, but if you put a cup of pure sucralose in the same recipe, it would be inedible - no one would do that.

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I've steered away (as much as possible) from sugar alcohols of all kinds since the 70's, when I figured out how bad I felt on them. I did occasionally get some when not reading ingredient labels carefully... or back when I did not realize certain sweeteners were in the sugar alcohol family. I generally figured out that there were sugar alcohols in those foods from the lower digestive upset though.

The protein powder I've been using is Gold Standard Whey - it has sucralose and ace-K in in it, but no sugar alcohols. I buy the big bags at Costco, but only the vanilla ice cream flavor (the chocolate has maltodextrin, and modified food starch, both of which I prefer to avoid). There's some things in the Gold Standard that others might prefer to avoid though: sunflower or soy lecithin and cellulose and xanthan gum. Those are way down on the list, and I already use xanthan as a thickener in cooking, so those don't personally concern me in the minimal amounts used.

That raises a yellow flag for me. There have been so many bogus tests, sponsored by for back of a better term, “Big Sugar” that have been planned in a way to show that sugar is a better sweetener.

That doesn't mean this test was one of them, so I'll keep my eyes open.

We don't use much of that product at all, but we do a bit, so I'll be cautious.