Isn’t this the ingredient In a lot of foods that are said to be diabetic friendly?
erythritol was also correlated with heart disease.
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/erythritol-cardiovascular-events
They’re not really so close that i’d expect them to both trigger. I wonder if the tests excluded other sweeteners.
Xylitol also kills dogs, so, whatever this study says, at least keep it away from your dogs.
This clickbait bullshit should not be tolerated. The ingredient name in question is only one word, instead of the stupid sentence they used.
It’s xylitol. Shame on every shitbag sellout that decided to not just say that in the headline.
I don’t know, I think it’s appropriate. If they just said Xylitol hardly anyone is actually going to know what that is or if it affects them. The title gives people an idea of how common it is and what foods it’s used in, which is more useful information to most people.
Xylitol, sweetener used in chewing gum and jam, linked to strokes and heart attacks
There, best of both worlds.
Fr. Clickbait is bullshit. I worked at whole foods when Xylitol was first making its way onto the market as a “natural” 0 cal sweetener and I was always skeptical of it and never intentionally bought anything with it in it. I can’t say I’m surprised to see this.
Where I live, xylitol has been a staple for decades and decades. It’s good for mouth hygiene, too. A correlation like in the article would probably show as a perceivable difference in overall strokes of our country’s populace as a whole, comparing to others, if it really was a thing that mattered. Might be, haven’t checked, but pretty sure we aren’t any more prone for that than any others. And here we eat xylitol from child up, usually several a day, after meals as gum (not the sugary candy-like gum, but the one intended to stop the acid attack) or pastilles. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t honestly. I don’t even know if you can get sugar gum anywhere, it’s so ubiquitous to xylitol and mouth hygiene.
So I mean, be suspicious, sure, but I’m pretty sure it’s highly tested and kept tracked here, because it’s a daily thing for everyone basically.
It’s good to be skeptical, but please don’t give this particular article toooo much weight. It’s not a real experiment, it’s just just an observation of correlation which doesn’t prove anything at all.
This website can show you plenty of other things that are extremely highly correlated. It really doesn’t prove anything.
Sugar alcohols are in a huge number of processed foods and might be responsible for a non negligible number of people feeling like shit. Fairly sure a local family owned bakery reduced some amount of sugar in their baked goods with sugar alcohols and it is not advertised and no ingredient list required unlike supermarkets. It is getting hard to escape stuff like this.
They’re referring to Xylitol. Xylitol.
Oh that makes it much clearer than the headline. Is it some sort of floor cleaner?
So glad we let companies sell us whatever poison hasn’t had enough research yet to show it’s unsafe…
I was thinking a while ago that I missed chewing gum all the time and now I realize I may want to not pick up that habit again.
Xylitol is fantastic for dental health.
Im assuming theres some confounding factor like “people who chew a lot of gum and eat a lot of artificial sweeteners are also people who just eat a lot in general or have history of obesity/type 2 diabetes” or something until a dedicated study proves otherwise.
At least some of that seems to be taken into account already:
The researchers also highlighted that the association was independent of underlying factors such as body mass index, hypertension, diabetes and lipid levels, which might predispose people to low-calorie products.
Still agree more research is needed.
I read that to mean they did not take any of that into account. Since the data was independent of underlying factors, they ignored those underlying factors. Which were probably the actual factors.
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/erythritol
Often mixed with sugar substitutes, like cheap stevia leaf extract (or at least was, not sure, now).
Can’t wait to find out about maltodextrin, which is added to a lot:
https://www.healthline.com/health/food-nutrition/is-maltodextrin-bad-for-me
“In this observational work, however, it appears that xylitol has a negative long-term effect on cardiovascular events in the general population. As with all observational studies, causalities are difficult to infer, but this work shows that further studies are mandated into this societally important topic.”
This is important, because the outcome of the study is: we need more studies. It is not that xylitol has been shown to be dangerous, a jump so many comments have made.
There was an observed effect in people who had “high blood levels of xylitol”. But there were few if any other controls:
The researchers also highlighted that the association was independent of underlying factors such as body mass index, hypertension, diabetes and lipid levels, which might predispose people to low-calorie products.
It’s been known for a while that extremely high levels of xylitol can act as a diuretic, but that’s true of a lot of other things, too. That’s also not relevant here. It’s important to not jump to unwarranted conclusions until more proper studies are conducted.
How can you ignore diabetes and the other risk factors that lead to using sugar-free products and are huge risk factors in themselves?
At least exclude certain ones.
Plenty of people use xyitol products for other reasons. For instance, I just bought a pack of xylitol gum to carry because I won’t be able to brush my teeth during the day. Gum with sugar makes my teeth feel worse.
Exclude smokers and people with uncontrolled diabetes and cholesterol at least.
Study the gym goers that want to eat their sugar as treats and use xylitol drinks or breath mints daily.
How much caffeine was in everyone’s system? Alcohol? Were the other blood level markers in range?
With no controls, it could be anything. Maybe they were all covering cigarette and beer breath with mints when they had a cardiac event.
I hate studies like this.
Just pointing out the obvious. A shill for xylitol (tobacco, diesel cars, coal power plants, Israel . . ) would say the exact same thing - “more study is needed . . .”
Pretty much every study ends with “more study is needed”. It’s rare for a study of this type to be conclusive.
Anyone saying “all the science is done, no more study is needed” is not to be trusted.
The same shit is the reason everyone dropped using msg…which surprise turned out to be Bullshit.
If you deny the scientific method because you fear everyone is a shill, you’re probably gonna have a bad time.
ok Big Xylitol, you’ll never get me!
That’s added to the end of literally every study. It’s an acknowledgement that not every single conceivable question has been answered by this study. Further research is always required.
Bro did NOT get the joke lmao
Xylitol? The sweetener that kills pets? I’m shocked, Shocked I say!
So do fucking grapes.
Chocolate also kills pets.
If you read the article, you’ll see the authors of the study literally saying that not many conclusions should be drawn from it.
What sort of diet leads to high blood levels? My guess is the xylitol in my mouthwash or toothpaste that I spit out isn’t causing a high level in the blood and still benefits my oral health. Any studies on that?
Diet colas, snack foods, anything really it’s just another artificial sweetener. It most likely will not be any worse than aspartame with more studies.
I complain to my wife all the time that sugar alcohols shoild be banned from food products.
And which food manufacturer does your wife run ?
I swear I’ve seen companies advertise “no artificial sweeteners” while using things like stevia or monk fruit. Maybe I’m misremembering, but it’s so irritating that you just have to know an increasingly long list of sweeteners to check for.
Well yeah because stevia and monk fruit aren’t artificial, they’re natural alternatives to sweeteners.
I’m not making health claims but they do grow in the ground hence non artificial.
But yeah I don’t really like them, so I would wish it would say low sugar, and also no added sweetener alternatives or something, since that’s what I like and I will see low sugar and then buy it and it’s sickly sweet with the fake ones…
Whole leaf stevia is a little bitter, but I haven’t seen any studies on any of it. I haven’t looked, either, since I’ve cut out all of it, unless I’m out somewhere and can’t avoid it (questionable water sources, for example).
When they started using it in yogurt it almost made me vomit every time I bought it without checking. Didn’t take many times to learn, but too damn long. Everyone I’ve asked never had the same problem though. Turns out stevia just tastes heinous to me so… hooray?
That’s probably the extract + ethyriol or maltodextrine., in the US. Outside, I don’t know. I’ve never seen a marketed product with whole leaf.
Ahh, probably then. I honestly forgot about the “whole leaf” vs extract thing, even though that was made as a clear point. I must be at the point I instinctually, typically process no difference. Even though it was clearly stated. Oooof.
“No added sugar” but then the ingredients list extra juice concentrate is another pet peeve.
It is important to note that this was an observational study, meaning it can only show an association between higher xylitol levels and cardiovascular events, rather than proving that xylitol directly caused them, and further research is needed. But it is not a green light to have more sugar instead, as we still need to reduce our free sugar intake
Correlation vs Causation caveat is strongly needed here
Another note is that this is a sweetener, so it replaces sugar, and sugar is also linked to strokes and heart attacks through diabetes and obesity.
Nearly all dietary studies are correlation studies, unfortunately.
It would make a great tag for such posts, if tags existed.
