Sugar substitute erythritol
 

About a year ago, I tried a sugar substitute for the first time, Swerve Confectioners, to add to my carafe of lime or lemon water when I craved lemonade or limeade. When I ran out last week, I bought a different brand without reading either ingredients list. I used the new erythritol sweetener in my hot chocolate today - big mistake - it didn't sweeten and I ran to the bathroom about 45 minutes later. I get that same effect when I juice any fruits other than lemon, lime, or apple into my veg juice. I assume I'm sensitive to the sugar alcohols. When I get the chance, I will do some research on fructooligosacharides vs oligosacharides.

Anyone else have these side effects? Any food scientists out there?

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Sugar alcohols have a laxative effect for most people when consumed in sufficient quantity. Never used the "e" one straight but my wife uses one that appears to be almost all "e" with monkfruit extract for baking, and it works quite well (we don't like N. American levels of sweetness) in baking.

I braved adding the new sweetener to my lime water today, two spoons in a liter of water with four tablespoons of lime juice (big lime), and all was well. I think I added 4 or 5 spoons to my hot chocolate (32 oz carton almond milk), because it didn't sweeten at all and I added more. Does the hot beverage affect the ability of erythritol to sweeten? I dunno.

I went to replace a supply of Stevia this morning and read most of the boxes before purchasing. Some call themselves a “stevia blend” some just say stevia. Most had erythritol as a second ingredient. I didn’t see any that were pure stevia. I ended up selecting one with dextrose as the second ingredient, mostly because I remembered this thread and didn’t want to be running to the bathroom 45 minutes after finishing my iced coffee. Isn’t dextrose sugar? How do they stay at 0 calories per serving? Why can’t I find a box of pure stevia?

1. If something has less than 5 calories per serving, the manufacturer can round it down to 0.
2. Pure stevia is extremely sweet- something like 200x more than sugar. It's "bulked up" with starch or sugar so that it measures more-or-less the same as sugar. People are generally not interested in doing the math when they sweeten their coffee, not to mention that it's hard to measure out 25 mg (vs. 5 g of sugar)

I've regularly used erythritol as a sweetner (often in a monkfruit blend) without any issues. It's my favorite sugar substitute.

I didn't mean to scare you off erythritol. I think my issue was it didn't at all seem to sweeten my hot chocolate, so I added more and more, a total ~5 heaping spoons to 33 ozs of almond milk. Since then, I've safely added two spoons to a liter of water with the juice of two limes/lemon. I need to find out if erythritol is affected by the hot temperature of my hot chocolate vs the room temp water of my lemonade/limeade.

Do you use it in hot beverages?

No, but I've used it for homemade candied pecans, which were quite sweet, but had a sort of "cooling" sensation which I hadn't really noticed in other applications

Thinking (way) back to my teens, I recall a brand of mint, sweetened with erythritol that had that cooling effect on the tongue. I don’t think it stayed on the market long.

interesting. I buy it in packets. Each appears to contain less than a teaspoon, possibly half. Now I need to measure one. The previous box, Publix store brand, listed no ingredients but stevia.

Dextrose is a kind of sugar. It's glucose (the simple sugar that your body utilizes for energy) that's usually derived from corn, and is not particularly sweet.

As far as pure stevia extract, I would imagine that it's not as prevalent anymore because pure stevia has an unpleasant chemical-y taste. You may still be able to find pure stevia extract in liquid form (in a bottle with a twist off dropper) in the vitamin section of your grocery store.

Erythritol has become ubiquitous in various foods and beverages, and it irks me that there are no warnings on the labels of items containing it. Like aspartame, the stuff gives me a vicious headache (and I am not prone to such things). Lily's Chocolate bars and Swerve and a bunch of GF and Paleo baking mixes are notorious for containing erythritol. Lots of research on the dangers of aspartame, but not much on erythritol. Btw, I use Stevia but just learned science is catching up with that ingredient too: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/art...for-our-health