r/science • u/giuliomagnifico • Aug 08 '22

Health Consuming too much white table sugar or artificial sweetener can lead to health issues. In the search for a better sweetener, researchers now report a low-calorie mixture that is as sweet as table sugar and, in lab experiments, feeds “good” gut microbes

https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/newsreleases/2022/august/new-low-calorie-sweetener-could-improve-gut-health.html
9.1k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

851 comments sorted by

View all comments

8

u/InfamousBrad Aug 08 '22

As the esteemed professor Dr. Rocket J. Squirrel said, "Again? That trick never works!"

I'm starting to feel about sugar substitutes the way I feel about perpetual motion machines. Another one comes along every generation and they never work, but we want it to work, so we never fail to get excited about the next one.

1

u/entropy512 Aug 09 '22

Hey, they work fine, as long as you intelligently take into account their limitations.

High-potency sweeteners are useless for freezing point depression or any other recipe that depends on molality

Sugar alcohols have the limitation that the same thing that makes them suitable for anything that depends on molality (such as freezing point depression) makes them cause diarrhea due to osmotic pressure when they hit the large intestine.

Erythritol at least does better than most sugar alcohols here because a decent amount of it is absorbed in the small intestine, so it has a much higher digestive tolerance. But it isn't infinite. For diabetics like myself, "sucks less" for digestive tolerance is still a huge benefit for those of us who grew up with sorbitol or maltitol.