Erythritol news: this is not ideal

[Arcadia]

On 3/2/2023 at 6:40 AM, ScoutTN said:

I really only use sugar/sweetener in a few dishes that I eat, mostly asian sorts of things. 

I don’t use sugar or sweetener for chinese, korean, japanese, indian dishes and skip the date/perilla syrup for korean dishes. I do use honey for braising for chinese roast pork.

[Shoeless]

5 hours ago, ScoutTN said:

I glad your husband’s is so manageable! 

My diabetes is autoimmune, triggered by a virus, T 1.5. It is not reversible, because no one can stop the antibodies from attacking my pancreas. I will eventually be insulin dependent, but for now am on Ozempic. I ate low carb for over 20 years before being diagnosed and am not overweight. The diabetes is not caused by a poor diet and lack of exercise. I also have Hashimoto’s. Autoimmune cascade. 
 

I didn't say your diabetes was caused by being overweight or poor diet. I was just offering up our experience to add on to the conversation in case you thought I was just pulling an opinion out of thin air and not from any sort of experience. I also have Hashimoto's and it's been a PITA. 

My entire point was: if dates cause bg spikes, honey is not likely to give better results. That's all. 

I'll bow out of the convo since I seem to be irritating you. 

[Corraleno]

1 hour ago, kokotg said:

A few years ago at least people were hyping it up as somehow way healthier than table sugar. Same with agave nectar. But really they're all just sugar.

I think the reason people consider coconut sugar to be healthier than white sugar is because it's more of a whole food (it's just dehydrated sap from the coconut palm) and it includes minerals, essential fatty acids, and inulin, so it's considered to be a more "natural" sugar, not a sugar substitute. And some people just really like the taste of it, it has kind of a brown sugar/toffee flavor.

Edited March 3, 2023 by Corraleno

[Arcadia]

On 2/27/2023 at 2:56 PM, kokotg said:

I wonder if xylitol is any different? Or if this will hold up to more study.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/06/health/xylitol-heart-attack-stroke-wellness/index.html

"“We gave healthy volunteers a typical drink with xylitol to see how high the levels would get and they went up 1,000-fold,” said senior study author Dr. Stanley Hazen, director of the Center for Cardiovascular Diagnostics and Prevention at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute.

“When you eat sugar, your glucose level may go up 10% or 20% but it doesn’t go up a 1,000-fold,” said Hazen, who also directs the Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Microbiome and Human Health.

“Humankind has not experienced levels of xylitol this high except within the last couple of decades when we began ingesting completely contrived and sugar-substituted processed foods,” he added.

In 2023, the same researchers found similar results for another low-calorie sweetener called erythritol, which is used as a bulking sugar in stevia, monkfruit and keto reduced-sugar products."

[Arcadia]

@kokotg

press release https://consultqd.clevelandclinic.org/another-sugar-substitute-xylitol-is-linked-to-heightened-cardiovascular-risk

study: Xylitol is prothrombotic and associated with cardiovascular risk https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/eurheartj/ehae244/7683453

”Conclusions

Xylitol is associated with incident MACE risk. Moreover, xylitol both enhanced platelet reactivity and thrombosis potential in vivo. Further studies examining the cardiovascular safety of xylitol are warranted.”

[kokotg]

I saw this. This part is interesting to me, and I don't know quite what to make of it:

Quote

“This suggests that the overnight fasting plasma levels of xylitol seen in our large observational cohort represent variations in endogenous levels of xylitol, not levels impacted by food consumption,” Dr. Hazen notes. He adds that this underscores just how great the clotting risk from food-related elevations in plasma xylitol may be, given how greatly the xylitol levels that are added to foods dwarf endogenous levels.

They seem to be saying that the people at increased risk have elevated levels of xylitol unrelated to...eating xylitol. And then just kind of speculate that therefore eating xylitol poses an even greater risk to those people than to people who don't have these elevated levels. I.e. it seems like the causality is still an open question? 

[kokotg]

I can't find it again, but I swear one thing I read quoted the guy running the study comparing it to cholesterol, which I thought was an interesting comparison. Like...used to be we were told that dietary cholesterol directly raised blood cholesterol, and now we understand the relationship to be a lot more complicated than that.