Leah:
Welcome to the Ideal Nutrition Podcast. I am Leah Higl and I’m here with my co-host Aiden Muir and for today’s episode, we will be covering sugar alcohols. Namely the broader question of what are they and are they bad for us? So let’s start with what even are sugar alcohols?
So essentially they are chemically very similar to both sugars and alcohols, but they’re also neither a sugar nor an alcohol in the traditional molecular sense, I suppose. So they have a slightly different chemical structure to both of those things. Most of them still contain calories, albeit less than sugar, which is why that’s a a major use for them is as a low calorie sweetener option as opposed to sugar.
Sugar alcohols are added to foods to give them that sweet taste and just essentially with less calories. But how many calories sugar alcohols contain does differ amongst the group because there are several kinds that are traditionally used in food. So just going through a number of sugar alcohols and the amount of calories they contain per gram. So we’d have things like sorbitol, xylitol, maltitol, and isomalt that are all around that kind of 2 to 2.5 calories per gram. In comparison, carbohydrates or sugar are about four calories per gram, just for context. And then we also have lower calorie ones, so things like mannitol, which has 1.6 calories per gram. Then we also have erythritol, which is super common to see in products as well, with the lowest amount of calories per gram at 0.2.
Aidan:
So when we’re looking at are these bad for us, let’s start by looking at what are some of the potential downsides. The first one, which is a downside depending on how you look at it is they can still increase blood glucose levels to differing levels. For example, erythritol pretty much doesn’t, whereas something like maltitol does, less than sugar, but it still does it. And the only reason I’m putting that in the downside category is because Sometimes people won’t know that. Sometimes people will see a product that we’ll talk about more as low carb and then it still increases like glucose levels.
Leah:
Important if you have diabetes.
Aidan:
Yeah, it is important to know this. Now, that’s just something that’s like a nice-to-know kind of thing. Now, some of it is more relevant and I’d assume is less known. A lot of people will still know this, but like, I don’t know, it’s a bit of a public service announcement that sugar alcohols can often lead to bloating and other IBS issues.
This once again is a bit of a spectrum with erythritol probably being the least likely to do it, largely super, super low calorie content and it doesn’t ferment as well. But some of them are far more likely to cause this. This is particularly relevant if one, you have heaps of them. For example, you’re having heaps of like low-carb protein bars and stuff like that. Or two, you happen to be particularly sensitive to them.
Some of these sugar alcohols are actually even feeding into the like low FODMAP diet in terms of they’re in the polyol section, so they need to be limited as well. One of the things that I find tough is I try to back up a lot of stuff I say with research. And research in this space is typically difficult to interpret. Like for example, maltitol is a very common trigger that people report.
If I go look at research on this, a lot of research comes back and they’re like, greater than 25 grams of maltitol can be tolerated without issues in many cases. Sometimes you have to go up to like 50 grams. But like the average protein bar contains less than 10 grams of maltitol. And it’s really interesting being like, the research shows that pretty much everybody is fine with really high amounts. You have to go quite high to experience symptoms, but a lot of people run into issues. How do we unpack that? There’s so many things, there’s so many things.
One thing, is that research is often done in very specific circumstances. Often people are fasted, they haven’t had other food, they’ll be having the mount total in isolation, not as part of the mixed meal and stuff like that. Part two is that people often have multiple triggers. They often have exposure to multiple things throughout the day. For example, they might’ve had exposure to like maybe they’ve got a little bit of lactose intolerance, they some lactose, maybe they’ve got issues with weight, they have some weight, and then they have the protein bar in the afternoon, that seems to be the trigger, that’s the thing that sets them off.
It might’ve had like eight grams of maltitol rather than 25 or whatever, but it’s still like a bit of a threshold effect where they’ve had multiple things crossed that threshold now. So I think it’s something that’s just an easy thing to look out for. If you’re looking, does this cause you bloating or other IBS issues? And you consistently have these products and you consistently notice that. It’s a bit of a common theme to be aware of and maybe it could be worth reducing your intake for these things.
Leah:
Yeah, and I find when working with people, if they just generally react to sugar alcohols, like obviously they’re probably getting some naturally through their diet, through things like avocado, for example. And then that plus the artificially sweetened thing with sugar alcohols is just like the tipping point for them. But it’s also one of those things that’s very easy to identify and reduce as well.
Other food-based stuff is less easy to identify and reduce.
Aidan:
Yeah, I love starting here even if it’s not the most impactful thing because it’s like I’d rather just be like, don’t have the low-carb protein bar, etc.
Leah:
What’s an easy win?
Aidan:
That one rather than being like, let’s explore the entire low-carb diet. Like I’d rather start with this first, and see if it helps. If it doesn’t, let’s go further.
Leah:
100%. Another thing we’re to touch on is a little bit of sneaky marketing from companies. So in Australia, while sugar alcohols, like they do contain calories, they do not need to be listed in the protein, fats and carb section. So other countries, as far as I’m aware, like the US put it in the carb section, correct? Yeah. Australia doesn’t do that. So even though they act very similar to carbohydrates in a way, even though they’re slightly lower calorie, they don’t show up in the nutrition panel that way, which is a little bit sneaky since they can have a very similar effect to obviously carbs.
Aidan:
Yeah, every now and then someone will list it. They just do not have to. They don’t have Most people won’t list it every now and some companies will be like, I’m trying to be super transparent. So they will list it, but a lot will intentionally not list it.
Leah:
For sure. And like it will show up in your in the calorie portion of the nutrition panel. But if you’re someone who is counting carbs, whether you have diabetes or you’re trying to reduce carbs in some way and you’re going for low-carb products. Well, there might be like a bunch of maltitol in there that is not listed in, there might be like five, five grams kind of, or five to 10 grams of maltitol in there that is acting like carbohydrates in a way that is not listed. And you wouldn’t consider that.
Aidan:
Yeah. And even talking through this as an example, let’s say you see a protein bar that’s 20 grams protein, 10 grams fat, two grams carbs. If it had 10 grams of maltitol, and we know maltitol is like 2.4 calories per gram, carbs are normally four. I’m just going to round down to make the math simple. You could think of that as an additional five grams of carbs in a way. So it’s like now you think about the macros being like 20, 10 and seven instead of 20, 10 and 2. Like it’s very easy to overlook that kind of thing.
Leah:
For sure. And I think it’s something that a lot of people do not know is happening, which is why we call it sneaky marketing. And I think it’s useful to know, particularly if diabetes is something that you’re trying to manage.
Aidan:
Yeah, 100%. And I can imagine how many people are trying to be in a ketogenic state or a really low-carb diet. So many examples. Let’s look at it from the complete opposite perspective because we’re looking at this being like, our sugar alcohol is bad for us. And we’ve just gone through the worst of the worst in a way. There’s other stuff we can talk about, natural versus unnatural and all of those kind of things. Just trying to look at it from a really scientific perspective, that seems to be the worst of the worst.
Are there benefits? So one that is kind of well known for having benefits is xylitol. It has solid evidence that actually helps with your teeth. The mechanism is that it helps prevent dental caries by reducing plaque formation and bacterial adherence. If you look at a bunch of chewing gum, you will see xylitol in a lot of these. So there can actually be benefits to that. The next one, you can look at the marketing thing we just talked about from two angles.
One angle is, it is a bit sneaky I never wanna call out any individual companies or anything like that, but I’m like, I know, I feel like they’re doing this, like they’re doing this intentionally. But the other angle is like, what if we flip the script? Is there any benefit to this? Like, maltitol, for example, is lower calories than sugar. It’s 2.4 versus four. By making this decision, they have reduced the calorie content, and they have reduced the sugar content.
It will raise blood glucose levels less than actual sugar will as well. So to a certain degree, you could even make the argument that it could be slightly more beneficial than having straight-up sugar in certain circumstances as well.
Leah:
So a little bit of a summary here. Sugar alcohols are mostly safe, but there are a few key points worth being aware of. They still contain calories. So if that’s something that is important to you, or you’re trying to reduce your calorie intake, that’s something to consider as well. They can raise blood glucose levels. So we’ve discussed that at a pretty decent length. So again, if it’s something that you’re mindful of, it can still have an effect there.
A big thing for my clients is that they can contribute to bloating. I work a lot in the IBS space and it’s one of those things where there’s like a 50 -50 split on the fact that people know that these sweeteners can cause digestive issues versus not. So it’s something to note if you do suffer from IBS or those kinds of symptoms. But overall, sugar alcohols can be consumed safely. They just have a few downsides that are worth being aware of.
Aidan:
This has been episode 143 and something that means the world to us is every time people leave a nice review, firstly, we just love the reviews. It’s really nice to be like, people are actually listening to us and care about us. That is actually really nice. But the other thing is it massively boosts us up the charts on things like the Apple Podcast rankings and stuff like that. You’d be surprised how much a couple of reviews actually move us massively up the charts, which one, exposes us to a larger audience every time we do that. And two, it does actually have a pretty positive impact on our business, our life, and our ability to create content for other people as well. So if you do leave a review, that would be massively appreciated as always.