Researchers are warning that a commonly used sugar substitute in commercial products ranging from keto snacks to diet drinks to chewing gum may raise your risk of heart attack and stroke. Apparently, erythritol can ‘quietly impair brain blood vessels’…
“A widely used sugar substitute found in everything from keto snacks to diet drinks may not be as harmless as it seems,” warns the preamble to an abstract of the final report by a team from the University of Colorado Boulder (UCB).
Erythritol was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2001, according to the abstract. It’s a sugar alcohol typically made by fermenting corn, and is now used in hundreds of food products. It contains almost no calories, delivers about 80 percent of the sweetness of regular sugar, and has little effect on insulin levels. Because of this, it’s commonly used by people trying to lose weight, manage blood sugar, or reduce carbohydrate intake.
What they found
“Our study adds to the evidence suggesting that non-nutritive sweeteners that have generally been purported to be safe, may not come without negative health consequences,” said Report senior author Christopher DeSouza, Professor of Integrative Physiology and Director of the Integrative Vascular Biology Lab at UCB.
“Big picture, if your vessels are more constricted and your ability to break down blood clots is lowered, your risk of stroke goes up,” said study team member, grad student Auburn Berry. “Our research demonstrates not only that, but how erythritol has the potential to increase stroke risk.”
The takeaway
“Given the epidemiological study that inspired our work, and now our cellular findings,” DeSouza states, “we believe it would be prudent for people to monitor their consumption of non-nutrient-sweeteners such as this one,” he said.
My take
It’s also useful to spotlight that fact that the amount of erythritol used in the UCB team’s cell-level lab studies was not huge – equivalent to what a person would consume from a normal serving of diet soda. So, the findings are based on ralistic exposure to the sweetener.
However, De Souza notes that the team’s findings come from lab experiments on isolated cells, not from studies in people, so more research is needed to confirm the risks in real-world settings…
~ Maggie J.