Erythritol and carbs

(Jeremiah ) #1

God’s blessings to all my ketonian family today. Hey i was getting ready to flavor my sparkling water with some Bai drinks and can’t help but notice it had 16 carbs for the full drinks but it says that there carbs cover from erythritol and doesn’t effect blood sugar so from a keto stands point how should I see those carbs? There still carbs right…

(Carey) #2

Proceed with caution and check your glucose response is my advice. Maybe it won’t effect you but it depends on YOUR insulin resistance levels. I use Jigsaw electrolyte powder and it has erythritol also for 2ish carbs. I use half doses or dilute even more and try to minimize use. No glucose impact for me with that approach

(Nick) #3

No, they’re not “still carbs”. Let me explain why.

Imagine you put some sugar in a glass capsule. You swallowed that capsule. The capsule worked its way out the other end, unbroken, with all its sugar still inside. Would you count the carbs of that sugar inside the capsule? Of course not. You wouldn’t say “hey, they’re ‘still’ carbs, so I’d better count 'em!”, would you?

Now, let’s look at erythritol. Certainly, it contains carbon and hydrogen configured in a way that might make it look like a carb, and labelling regulations find it convenient to call them such; however, it has some significant differences to the carbs we know in pure sugars and starches. Erythritol is put together in a way that looks like a hybrid between a sugar and an alcohol. Indeed, it’s why it’s part of a family we call “sugar alcohols” or polyols. Crucially, the chemical changes that happen because of this hybrid approach mean that each grain of erythritol might as well be in the glass capsule I describe above. The chemical modifications mean that, unlike normal digestible carbs, the body has no way of taking erythritol’s carbons and hydrogens apart to use as energy. And, in erythritol’s case, unlike some other polyols like xylitol or mannitol, the molecule is so small that most of it doesn’t even make it to your gut. The kidneys absorb it, and you urinate it out, unchanged. You could, if you wish, evaporate your urine and reuse it!

Scientists have conducted dozens of studies examining the body’s response to erythritol. And it never, independently, provokes insulin, nor the release of blood glucose. Indeed, that’s true even when carefully tested with diabetics. Of course, the very act of eating or drinking - or even THINKING about food - can cause a release of insulin. But, on its own, erythritol does bupkes. Check this study, for example, on diabetics and erythritol, which concludes:

“The single dose study suggests that erythritol exerts no effect on the metabolic system of diabetic patients. No significant changes were observed in blood glucose and insulin until ingestion of food.”

http://www.dficorp.com/ajax/pdfs/Effects%20of%20Erythritol%20on%20Diabetics%20-%20Ishikawa.pdf

Furthermore, it concludes:

“Daily (14-day) administration of erythritol had no significant effect on blood glucose levels, nor were there any significant effects observed on renal function. The significant decline in HbA1C, which provides an integrated index of the glycemic state, is an indication that erythritol may be helpful in long-term glucose control”

In summary: there is no mechanism by which the body can use erythritol for carb energy any more than it can use sand. So to erythritol just as you would a bottle of Karo is, at best, baseless superstition :slight_smile:

NOTE, though: if having anything sweet means you’re then going to be unable to resist, psychologically, a pack of chocolate chip cookies and a barrel of marshmallows, then by all means limit your exposure to sweetness per se. But don’t assume that this’ll be the case. Often, finding a safe replacement for the “forbidden fruit” is much better than pure abstinence, which can lead to a frustrated break, and binging.

Two questions that I have
Live experiment part 5.2: raspberries and cream (no sweetener)
(Jennifer) #4

I like the Bai’s, especially the Bai Bubbles. But I think they are a bit too sweet so I usually half it with a complimentary LaCroix flavor. That is about perfect!

I’m not sure if erythritol spikes my BG, because I don’t measure it, but I don’t get any typical carb feelings ( tired, sluggish need a nap, etc) after drinking/eating it. I do know that I can’t do any sweetener when I’m fasting. That triggers me to want to eat.

(Nick) #5

Erythritol has no way that it can, on its own, spike your blood glucose. The body has no way to convert it to glucose, and every single study done on it shows that it does not provoke insulin or glucagon. The only thing it could do, I guess, is be in some food or drink that expanded your stomach so much that it provoked an insulin response etc; but that’d happen whether erythritol was along for the ride or not :slight_smile:

(Jennifer) #6

I read somewhere that it is the only sugar alcohol that the body knows how to handle (kidneys just send it on out of the body) and can make it from glucose (but I’m not sure why it would make it?).

I use it and stevia exclusively.

But it really is a n=1 - try it and see if you notice any effects.

(Nick) #7

In a sense, it’s almost the opposite: it’s one of the only sugar alcohols that the body hasn’t a clue how to “handle” (if, by handle, you mean metabolise), so it just gets passed out like any other waste product.

Xylitol, for example, can be partially metabolised (albeit not via insulin, so that’s good), and the rest sits in the gut where bacteria can convert some of it to butyrate etc. The body produces xylitol as part of its metabolic processes endogenously every day. And yes, erythritol also sometimes gets made, as you describe above, but at that point, the the body can do nothing more with it.

Actually, stevia has more metabolic effects than erythritol, but people dote on it more because, hey, pretty green leaf, natural, garden of eden etc. I don’t like stevia myself, because to me it tastes like the Devil’s Liquorice :slight_smile:

(Jennifer) #8

Interesting - thanks for the clarification.

What about sorbitol? I figure it causes so many issues because the body doesn’t like it?

(Nick) #9

Not quite. Talking about what the body does or doesn’t “like”, as if dealing with fans or enemies of a sports team, can be misleading :slight_smile:

As I mentioned above, the body can’t do anything with the erythritol molecule other than urinate it out. The body can, however, pull apart some of sorbitol and convert it into… fructose! Uh oh. And the rest sinks to your gut, where it can have osmotic effects and give you a running stomach.

This is not to say sorbitol is “poisonous”; indeed, again, your body produces it as part of its normal metabolic processes; however, if you’re avoiding fructose, you’d probably also want to avoid sorbitol - and for the sake of your underwear, you’ll not want to ingest too much at one time :wink:

Sorbitol’s cheap, though, and is easier to work with in candies etc than erythritol, which is why it’s more ubiquitous. Maltitol is also cheap, and acts much more like sugar in confectionery. Sadly, though, the body can also convert it to normal sugars to some degree, so, again, it’s nowhere near as good for ketoers as the blessedly inert erythritol.

(jketoscribe) #10

Great explanation! Thanks. I use pure erythritol almost exclusively (can’t stand even the smallest drop of stevia) but the one annoyance is it’s tendency to recrystalize in some applications. Xylitol works better in those cases, but should some of the xylitol carbs be counted since some is absorbed by the body?

(Nick) #11

That’s a good question, without a simple answer. But first, let’s clarify something which can sometimes cause confusion. When physicians say ‘absorbed’, they don’t mean the same thing as ‘metabolised’. Absorption merely means it enters circulation so that something can happen with it. Erythritol, for example, is almost entirely absorbed, which is why it doesn’t cause many gut issues. Psyllium husks are absolutely not absorbed :slight_smile: And xylitol is partially absorbed.

Once erythritol is absorbed, it simply gets filtered out via the kidneys and excreted in the urine. So it’s absorbed, but not metabolised.

So what you’re really asking about wrt xylitol is whether it gets metabolised - in other words, whether the molecule can partake in chemical reactions in the body - for example, to get converted to ATP to provide energy to the body, and if it does get metabolised, does it get metabolised in a similar way to, say, glucose.

In xylitol’s case, the body CAN use the proportion of it that gets absorbed to convert to ATP, which it can then use to provide the body with energy. So it does get metabolised, to that degree. However, the process it goes through does not require any insulin, and nor does it create blood glucose. So it’s not like a typical carb at all.

So, you can sort of count some of xylitol as “calories”, but to count it as a carb, in the sense of glucose or fructose, and the effects they have? Not quite. If you provide enough energy via xylitol within the Krebs cycle, you’d probably reduce the production of ketones, I guess. But by how much, I am not sure.

Interestingly, some hospital patients used to be intravenously fed with xylitol. So clearly, it can provide the cells with significant energy when transfused directly. How much will make it from your xylitol sweetened chocolate treat is another question entirely!

(James storie) #12

I feel like I just went to class! Thanks for all of the great info @bokkiedog I’ve never heard it broken down like this before!

(Richard Morris) #13

Wow nice response on erythritol - and I love the glass ampule of sugar analogy.

(jketoscribe) #14

Thank you for the great explanations!0

(Jeremiah ) #15

Thank you so much for the in depth reactions with this sweetner. I just bought some glee gum that was sweetened with this and now am not going to be afraid of it like I was. God’s blessings

(Nick) #16

Being afraid will have genuinely promoted much more blood glucose (via cortisol) than the erythritol ever would. So enjoy! :slight_smile:

#17

Super useful as I’ve bene trying to figure out sweeteners. :hand_splayed:

#18

Great info, thanks. I wrote manufacturers inquiring about their source of Ery: all that I saw are from China-sourced corn starch (but supposedly “Non-GMO,” so there is that; hope they are also “Non-Melamine” too). Except Anthony’s Ery (on amzn). Love it. Sourced from USA sugar cane (also Non-GMO). But honestly, my taste for sweet is gone, after just the first 5 days on the Whole Thirty … then started Keto and we use GundryMD lectin elimination “OK foods” list.

(Nick) #19

To be honest, I don’t particularly care whether the erythritol originates in a lab, GMO corn or from Herman Goering’s tears. It’s a simple molecule (C4H10O4) and, once extracted and crystallised, there’s absolutely no way you’d know where it came from. Four carbon atoms from organic Jesus are indistinguishable from four carbon atoms from a factory Devil. :wink:

There are times when the origin of something can indeed suggest it may be contaminated or somehow inferior to something originated elsewhere or through a different method of production or raw ingredient. This may be the case, for example, in pastured-grassfed meat vs cafo meat, where we can detect differences in, say, the omega 3 concentration.

But when all you have left in the box are many copies of just one molecule, obsessing about where the carbon, the hydrogen and the oxygen came from to make that molecule, as if your body would somehow detect this and be affected by it, is termed the "genetic fallacy.

(Joseph) #20

:laughing: :laughing: :laughing: :laughing:

Great explanation, really breaking it down into layman’s terms for everyone to understand!