Erythritol and weight gain

(Erin Macfarland ) #1

I read this study regarding erythritol and it says that the body produces this sugar alcohol in the presence of glucose, and that this leads to more weight gain and belly fat. It does not address the impact of erythritol within the context of a low carb diet. I’m wondering what people here think about whether or not this sugar alcohol has the same deleterious effect on someone following keto? http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/biotech/sd-me-weight-erythritol-20170513-story.html

(Central Florida Bob ) #2

Thanks for posting this, Erin. Since I’ve switched over to almost exclusively using erythritol, this caught my eye. I have to say that newspaper article came across as really disjointed. First it talked about erythritol then it jumped to blood fructose levels, and fatty liver disease. I went to the journal article and the abstract made more sense. The abstract never mentioned fructose or the other things the article did.

First off, it’s a typical association study so no conclusion about cause and effect can be made. Then it gets worse.

Second off, it wasn’t talking about dietary erythritol, it was saying that it was made endogenously. “A metabolite, erythritol, was elevated at the beginning of the year in freshmen who went on to gain weight, fat, and abdominal fat compared with freshmen with stable weight.” This saying the students who went on to gain weight had higher blood erythritol levels at the start of the year.

The big claim seems to be that they found for the first time that our bodies produce erythritol ourselves. "We report a previously unrecognized metabolism of glucose to erythritol, and given the association between erythritol and weight gain, research is needed to understand whether and how this pathway contributes to weight gain risk. "

Since what they ate wasn’t controlled in any way that I can see, we don’t even know if the subjects consumed erythritol at all.

This leaves a cause and effect question: did they produce erythritol because they were gaining weight or were they gaining weight because they were producing erythritol? It can’t say.

From what I can see, it says absolutely nothing about dietary erythritol in any context. Not low carb, not keto, not high carb. I don’t think it says anything useful to us. Or maybe not to anyone at all.

Like I say, I still have the sweetener weakness and I’ve been using more erythritol lately, maybe two tablespoons over the course of a day. This is specifically because of what I can read about affects on insulin and glycemic index. Because of this, articles that might show problems with erythritol catch my eye.