The Truth About Sugar Substitutes and Sugar Alcohols

Sugar alcohols are the most popular type of sugar substitute,
but there are a lot of sugar alternatives on the market today.
Here's what you need to know before you use them.

I get a lot of questions about sugar substitutes and sugar alcohols, so in this post, I'm going to share what you need to know about sugar alternatives before you use them.

In general, artificial sweeteners are allowed and even encouraged on most ketogenic diets. Sugar is the bad guy when it comes to low carb because it does all sorts of nasty things to you, such as elevated insulin levels.

Typically, low-carb diets claim that sugar substitutes don't raise blood glucose levels, but this isn't true for all alternative sweeteners, so I'm also going to give you a glycemic list you can use to compare the effect that these different sweeteners have on your blood sugar.

The only caution I've heard about artificial sweeteners over the years comes from the Atkins Diet.

Dr. Atkins said to not use aspartame, due to the research he was privy to, and the ANA has recommended that you count the little packets of Splenda as 1 carb each.

However, I drank diet soda with aspartame when I lost over 100 pounds, and I suffered no ill effects from doing that.

But this isn't true for everyone.

Several individuals within the low-carb community have experienced health issues due to aspartame, which only cleared up after giving up the diet soda. You want to be cautious when it comes to substituting for sugar, and pay attention to what you body is telling you.

In addition, some people actually secret insulin when they put anything sweet in their mouth, so even the glycemic index values of sugar substitutes won't give you the whole story.

On Atkins Induction, the packets are limited to 3 per day, due to the 3-servings per day rule.

No one has ever shared exactly why that is.

Some people have theorized that it's because sugar substitutes keep your cravings alive, but those little packets, and especially the bulk type sweeteners, are loaded with maltodextrin.

Maltodextrin is a super-high glycemic sweetener.

I'm a follow-the-money type of person. I'm always wary when it comes to people trying to sell me on an idea that is to their financial interest for me to swallow and believe.

Because of this, and because it's been years since I wrote about the truth of sugar alcohols on this blog, I did a little more digging into the whole topic of artificial sweeteners the past few days. I was looking for new information and concerns.

While most of what I found, I already knew, there were a few surprises. Here's the good, the bad, and the ugly about sugar alternatives.

Can Sugar Substitutes Cause Weight-Loss Stalls?

Most of the people who write to me want to know if these substitutes could be causing their weight-loss stall. They have been told by other low-carb dieters that giving up all sweeteners can get the scales moving again.

Unfortunately, anecdotal evidence within the low-carb community is mostly mixed. There's no right or wrong answer. Some dieters have found that sugar substitutes can interfere with weight loss. Others say they haven't experienced any problems from using sugar substitutes at all.

Me?

Throughout most of my weight-loss journey, I had no reaction to sugar substitutes at all. But after doing a round of the HCG diet, I got seriously glutened when we took a trip to Colorado and started reacting to corn.

Since all sugar substitutes are based on corn, I started severely reacting to all forms of artificial sweeteners.

I had to give them up for a very long time.

Today, I do drink Diet Dr. Pepper and have added Carbmaster yogurt to the menu. I also use a drop or two of liquid sucralose in cole slaw and other salads, and I seem to do okay with erythritol, but that's as far as I've tried to reintroduce sugar substitutes.

So far, I'm doing okay.

My current weight loss plateau isn't due to the sugar alternatives I'm using. I wasn't losing weight before I added them back into my diet and decided that if I have to cut calories to get the scales moving again, I might as well return a little sweetness to my day.

Determining whether sugar substitutes are interfering with your weight loss isn't easy. There are a lot of factors involved.

• Which sugar substitute are you using?
• What form of that substitute do you use?
• What are the fillers and bulking agents in the brand you're using?
• How does your body react to a sweet taste in the mouth?
• Are you sensitive to GMO corn or sugar beets, wheat or rice?
• How much sugar substitute are you eating daily?
• Is your blood glucose response normal, or do you have pre-diabetes or diabetes?
• Do you have insulin resistance and/or metabolic syndrome?
• Do you have any autoimmune issues?
• Do you have food sensitivities, such as sugar or corn intolerance?

Unless you're sensitive to corn or have autoimmune problems, most liquid forms of sugar substitutes come with a zero or nearly zero glycemic index rating, due to the lack of fillers, so they won't raise blood glucose levels. 

They still fall under the 3-servings per day Atkins rule, however.

Liquid sugar alternatives are not supposed to interfere with weight loss, but balancing glucose levels is only one aspect of correcting metabolic issues. There are lots of other problems attached to sugar substitutes.

Sweet Taste Can Cause Insulin to be Released

For some people, first phase insulin can be released
when you taste something sweet, even if the product
doesn't have any real sugar in it.

People who react to a sweet taste in the mouth will have a first-stage insulin response before they even swallow something that tastes sweet. Food and beverages don't have to include carbs for the body to secret insulin into the bloodstream.

The taste tells the body that sugar is on the way.

Sometimes, just looking at food or browsing through food pictures is enough to trigger this insulin response. This is more likely with those who over secrete insulin already, but it doesn't have to be.

The body prepares itself for a sugar load as soon as the diet soda or sugar substitute hits the mouth, even though you aren't actually eating any sugar.

The danger is that excess insulin in those with normal blood glucose will result in lower blood sugar values, which in turn, can set off hunger and cravings if your blood glucose level drops too low.

This is why some low carbers can give up drinking diet sodas or using sugar substitutes and find their weight-loss stall reversed. Sugar alternatives cause them to eat more.

There is No Natural Sugar Substitutes

The word "natural" isn't regulated by the FDA. Manufacturers can use the term to mean anything they want it to mean.

In the context of artificial sweeteners, it generally means that a form of the chemical is found somewhere in the body, most likely in a much lower dose, but since it's there, somewhere, that means the concentrated form you put into your digestive system is natural.

The body is truly miraculous at adapting to a wide variety of adverse conditions, but anything it deems to be foreign or unrecognizable, will be tagged for attack by the immune system.

There is no workaround for that.

Once a manufacturer extracts a chemical or natural substance from a particular food or plant, it is no longer natural. Especially, if they are concentrating it, refining it, and doing odd things to it after it's been extracted.

A good example of this is crystalline fructose.

Fructose is a natural sugar found in fruit and starchy vegetables like corn, but once it is extracted and concentrated, and then refined into a crystalline powder, the liver doesn't have a way to deal with the onslaught of that much fructose -- other than to store it as glycogen.

If glycogen stores are full, as they often are when you're following a standard American diet, fructose will be changed into triglyceride and stored as fat. The fat can either be used to refill your shrinking fat storage or it can be stored in the liver.

All of the fructose produced in the U.S. today is made from GMO cornstarch or GMO beet sugar. It is not even made from fruit any more. The abnormal sugar is then enzymatically hydrolized to separate it into its two components of sucrose and fructose.

While some sugar alternatives are better than others, such as stevia, even stevia is hyped to be natural when the only forms available to consumers are either a highly-refined white powder (real stevia is green and bitter, not sweet) or a liquid concentrate.

Truvia is advertised to be stevia, but is actually erythritol (a sugar alcohol) with a spec of ribiana added, just enough to legally say there is stevia in the product. So don't fall for the stevia claims.

Sugar alcohols are tooted to be special cases since they generally pass out of the body completely intact, but that isn't always the case. Plus, sugar alcohols in the U.S. are not even made from plants. They are processed from sugars and starches.

For instance, erythritol, the most popular low-carb sugar alcohol, is made by fermenting glucose with various yeasts. The glucose is derived from GMO corn. Supposedly, 90% of erythritol is absorbed into the bloodstream before it passes into the colon, which is why low carbers and diabetics find it attractive.

Watch Out for Bulking Agents and Fillers

This is where a lot of low-carb dieters get taken for a ride.

A particular sugar substitute, such as sucralose, is zero or nearly zero on the glycemic index. It is then advertised as such. It won't raise blood glucose, therefore you can use it freely. Great!

However, during processing, it is bulked up with maltodextrin. Maltodextrin can be derived from GMO corn, wheat, potatoes, and/or dextrose, which sends the glycemic index of the sugar sub, and its ability to raise blood glucose and insulin levels, through the roof.

Dieters are chowing down on bulk sugar substitutes in baked goods, candies, and desserts thinking they are doing their body a favor. They are following their low-carb diet, they think. They are only eating 20 net carbs a day, or less.

But are they?

Did you know that bulk Splenda has 24 grams of carbohydrates per cup?

And that when you mix sucralose with maltodextrin, the highest glycemic ingredient there is, the glycemic index jumps from almost zero for the liquid version of sucralose to a whopping 130 on the GI scale?

The global market for sugar substitutes is HUGE.

It's worth over 9 billion dollars per year. These global manufacturers have a financial interest in keeping you ignorant to the truth about sugar substitutes and, thereby, keeping you fat.

That's how they make their money.

They don't really care about your health. Their only interest is to convince you that using sugar alternatives mindlessly is to your advantage, so you'll buy, and keep on buying, their product.

Maltodextrin and dextrose are not your friend. They are made from GMO corn, the same as:

• Erythritol
• Maltitol
• Sorbitol
• Yacon syrup

In addition, maltodextrin is absorbed through the gut and processed in the liver, exactly like fructose is, so it is metabolized slower than dextrose and easily contributes to liver fat.

[For more information check out our article on how a low-carb diet improves fatty liver disease.]

This is why there is a lot of misinformation on the web.

Manufacturers of Splenda will tell you that the rise in blood sugar you get from using their product is negligible, but that's deceptive. The blood sugar rise from eating bulk Splenda comes hours after normal testing.

Like Dreamsfield pasta, maltodextrin will eventually be turned into glucose and processed by the liver, after it's converted in the liver to glycogen, but that doesn't usually happen before the traditional 2 hour post-meal testing period.

If you're only testing your blood sugar 2 hours after eating maltodextrin, the test won't be accurate.

The glucose bonds have to be broken down in the liver first before it can be turned into glycogen. Once it's stored as glycogen, it can then be further broken down into glucose, as needed. Maltodextrin is fully digested by the body, but it's just digested slower.

Eventually, those carbs have to be dealt with.

The Glycemic Index of Sugar Substitutes

The glycemic index measures how blood glucose responds to food and beverages. The index ranks foods on a scale of 1 to 100, with 100 being glucose for comparison purposes.

However, maltodextrin and maltose tested above 100.

Foods and beverages that fall below 55 on the scale are considered low-glycemic. This is where the idea of berries and other low-glycemic fruits being okay to eat during the weight-loss phase of the Atkins Diet came from.

It is also why Dr. Atkins has always insisted that carbohydrates are not alike.

Strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries are very low
on the glycemic index. 

Foods and beverages that rank 70 or above are considered high-glycemic and should only be used with extreme caution.

In real life the glycemic index of a food, beverage, or ingredient depends on the:

• amount of carbohydrate in a serving
• type of carbohydrate you eat
• presence of fat and fiber, which slows down digestion

Some sugar substitutes, including liquid ones, have fiber added to slow the rate at which they are digested, but these carbohydrates are still metabolized as carbohydrates, and they will eventually produce a blood glucose effect.

More important than the blood sugar rise is what this index shows about the average person's insulin response.

A healthy insulin response will have your blood glucose level back to normal by the 2 hour testing period, whether you've ingested a solid food, beverage, or straight glucose, but that isn't what those doing the testing are seeing.

Glycemic Index Value of Common Sugar Alternatives:

Maltodextrin 130

Maltose 105

Dextrose 100

Glucose 100

Splenda bulk 80

Sucrose/table sugar 65

Caramel coloring 60

HFCS - 55 58

Molasses 55

Maple Syrup 54

Honey 50

Cane juice 43

Lactose 43

Barley malt syrup 42

Coconut palm sugar 35

Maltitol 35

Brown rice syrup 25

Fructose 24

Agave syrup 11

Xylitol 12

Sorbitol 4

Isomalt 2

Mannitol 2

Erythritol 1

Yacon syrup 1

Sucrolose 1

The values above can be quite deceptive if you ignore the bulk fillers and the fact that a lot of popular sugar alternatives contain a high concentration of fructose.

While I don't believe that fructose is as dangerous as most low-carb advocates claim, provided it's eaten in moderation, it will be stored as body fat or liver fat once your glycogen stores are full -- the same as any other carb.

The Bottom Line

Sugar alcohols, which are quite low on the index, have a reputation for providing severe digestive distress if taken in more than minute quantities. Most of the substitutes are made from:

• corn
• wheat
• rice
• potatoes
• sugar beets
• other sugar and starches

They are not going to be suitable for those allergic or sensitive to those foods.

If you have autoimmune issues, you might find sugar alternatives extremely problematic since the body is already primed to seek out, attack, and destroy anything it doesn't recognize.

One of the biggest problems I see with the use of sugar substitutes is that too many dieters try to use them to imitate the diet that got them fat in the first place. Unable to leave their favorite foods behind, they turn to sugar alternatives almost on a daily basis to help them create delicious cakes, cookies, and other low-carb desserts.

Unfortunately, the body was never designed to handle sugar or sugar substitutes in the forms and amounts we ask it to handle today, and that includes the better sugar alternatives.

In addition, long-term use of substitutes has been known to cause serious issues with liver, kidney, and thyroid function even if they are low-glycemic.

That's not to say that sugar substitutes don't have their place in a healthy low-carb diet. The truth about sugar substitutes is that they should be used mindfully and with care.

Take the time to thoroughly investigate the sugar alternative you're using or thinking of using. Look at the research. Look at the ingredients. Run a few tests on yourself, and then make the best choice for you.

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