Sugar Alcohols, What Are They? Are They Bad For You?

If you spend time looking at nutrition labels, like me, you’ve probably noticed Sugar Alcohols listed on a few and probably wondered what exactly they are. They’re typically found in soft drinks, chewing gum, cookies, and some sugar-free hard candies.

Sugar Alcohols are a type of carbohydrate that sweetens food but with half the calories of sugar. They are converted into glucose more slowly than sugar and require little or no insulin for processing.

Sugar alcohols are usually incompletely absorbed into the blood stream from the small intestines which generally results in a smaller change in blood glucose than “regular” sugar (sucrose). This property makes them popular sweeteners among diabetics and people on low-carbohydrate diets. However, as for many other incompletely digestible substances (such as dietary fiber), overconsumption of sugar alcohols can lead to bloating, diarrhea and flatulence because they are not absorbed in the small intestine. Some individuals experience such symptoms even in a single-serving quantity. With continued use, most people develop a degree of tolerance to sugar alcohols and no longer experience these symptoms. As an exception, erythritol is actually absorbed in the small intestine and excreted unchanged through urine, so it has no side effects at typical levels of consumption.

[Wikipedia - Sugar alcohol]

[tags]sugar alcohols, sugar alcohol, health, dieting, Diabetes[/tags]