You will come into contact with sugar alcohol when you start to search for some sugar-free, diet-friendly or low-carbohydrate products. When you look at the label of these products such as soft drinks, gums, cookies and sugar-free candy, you are likely to see words such as maltitol, manitol, sorbitol and xylitol. All of them are sugar alcohols.
What is sugar alcohol
Sugar alcohol, also named as polyol, is sugar-free sweeteners that are carbohydrates but not sugar. Sugar alcohol has fewer calories per gram than sugar: sugar has 3 calories per gram, while sorbitol has 2.6, xylitol has 2.4, and mannitol has 1.6. Scientists call it sugar alcohol because part of the structure chemically resembles sugar and part chemically resembles alcohol.
Sugar alcohol occurs naturally in plants. Some of them are extracted from plants. For example, sorbitol is extracted from corn syrup and mannitol is from seaweed. However, they are mostly manufactured from sugars and starches.
Since it is not technically sugar, manufacturers are able to say sugar-free when they use sugar alcohol as sweeteners. Anyway, it is a requirement to include sugar alcohol in the carbohydrates count on the nutrition label although not everyone does it.
Sugar alcohol and health issue
Weight loss
It is better to consume sugar alcohol than pure sugar itself for healthy weight loss purpose as it does not cause sudden increase in blood sugar. When come to absorption, sugar alcohol is slowly and incompletely absorbed from the small intestine into blood, and the portion that is absorbed requires little or no insulin. Under this situation, people tend not to crave for foods especially carbohydrates, and thus help in healthy weight loss.
However, consumers should consider the total calorie content of the diet consumed and should avoid over consumption of all foods including those foods containing sugar alcohol. Besides, you need to consider other important factors such as how frequent you consume in a day, the amount eaten in one sitting, type of food, individual response, and adaptation over time if you want to take sugar alcohol.
Diabetic Diets
The main goal for diabetes nutritional management is to maintain near-normal blood glucose levels. In this case, sugar alcohol may be useful in diabetic diets due to its incomplete absorption.
American Dietetic Association recommends that persons with diabetes can manage their blood sugars using the carbohydrate counting method. They can count half of the grams of sugar alcohol as carbohydrates since half of the sugar alcohol on average is digested.
Anyway, people with diabetes should consult their physician, dietitian or other health professional on how to incorporate sugar alcohol into their daily meal plans.
Tooth decay
As sugar alcohol is not acted upon by bacteria in the mouth, therefore it do not cause tooth decay. Xylitol has been found to inhibit oral bacteria, and is often used in sugarless mints and chewing gums for this reason. The Food and Drug Administration authorizes the use of a health claim in food labeling that sugar alcohol does not promote tooth decay.
Possible symptoms of sugar alcohol
Although the word “alcohol” is part of the name, sugar alcohol cannot get you drunk like alcoholic beverages do. Anyway, some of the sugar alcohols can cause slight gastric upset for some people, such as bloating, a little gas or a mild laxative effect as they are not completely absorbed into the bloodstream. The American Dietetic Association advises that greater than 50g/day of sorbitol or greater than 20g/day of mannitol may cause diarrhea.
Apart from that, you need to careful with portion size for healthy weight loss purpose even though the food may be technically sugar-free, the calories and grams of sugar alcohol can add up. And some of the carbohydrate addicts say that products sweetened with sugar alcohol can trigger cravings just like products sweetened with sugar.
Conclusion
You can easily find that there is an increasing variety of sugar alcohol-containing foods on supermarket shelves. Although these products may have a role in healthy weight loss, and in eating plans for people with diabetes, its long-term benefits have not been well established. For healthy weight loss purpose, it is recommended to understand right weight loss concept, perform right exercise and adjust to a healthy diet habit.
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