Xylitol - An Answer I Have Found Acceptable

What is xylitol and is it safe?

Xylitol is a natural sweetener found in many fruits and vegetables, including raspberries and plums. It tastes and looks like sugar. Because of its unique molecular structure, xylitol reduces the amount of tooth eating acid that is produced by the bacteria in our mouth. Xylitol is not a chemical or a drug. It's completely natural. It is even produced by the human body during normal metabolism (up to 15 grams daily from other foods).

The safety of xylitol has been extensively tested. To date, it is completely devoid of adverse effects. In fact, a commission of the US FDA reports that the use of xylitol is safe for humans and acceptable as an approved food additive in foods for special dietary uses. This indicates that xylitol is extremely safe and that no consumption limits are needed.

How does Xylitol differ from other sweeteners?

Xylitol is an all-natural sweetener that is as sweet as sugar. Because it is all-natural, it differs substantially from articifically created sweeteners like Splenda®, sucralose, aspartame, sacchrine, Sweet-N-Low, acesulfame potassium.

Xylitol is a nutritive sweetener that contains about 40% fewer calories than sugar. Because of its molecular structure, it is considered a polyol or “sugar alcohol.” Sugar alcohols are commonly used to sweeten sugar-free products and xylitol is considered a “sugar-free” sweetener. Sugar alcohols are neither sugars nor alcohols. They are carbohydrates with a chemical structure that partially resembles sugar and partially resembles alcohol, but they don’t contain ethanol as alcoholic beverages do. They are incompletely absorbed and metabolized by the body, and consequently contribute fewer calories. The polyols commonly used include sorbitol, mannitol, xylitol, maltitol, maltitol syrup, lactitol, erythritol, and isomalt.

Xylitol is the sweetest of all the sugar alcohols and has the greatest impact on the bacteria that cause tooth decay.

Q: How can products that claim to be sugarless still have lots of carbohydrates and be safe for diabetics?

A: The answer to your question lies in the broad definition of carbohydrate. There are many different types of carbohydrates. Not all are quickly metabolized into simple sugars that quickly raise blood glucose.

There are actually four distinct classes of carbohydrates in foods.

The first class is simple sugars naturally found in fruits, honey and sweeteners like cane sugar, cane juice, fructose, corn syrup, dextrose, maltose, maple syrup and fruit juice. These sugars are quickly metabolized, cause significant blood sugar swings, and are unhealthy for diabetics.

The second class is complex carbohydrates found in whole grains. When eaten with a meal containing fats and proteins, these carbohydrates are acceptable for diabetics.

The third class is sugar alcohol like sorbitol and zylitol. Sugar alcohols are not completely metabolized and are very slow to enter the blood stream. They are good sweeteners for diabetics because they don’t cause significant blood sugar swings.

The fourth class is fiber. Fiber is considered a carbohydrate, but is not metabolized at all by humans. It does not enter the bloodstream and does not increase blood sugar.

Thus, when choosing snack foods you must read the ingredient label and see what type of carbohydrates are in the food. Avoid snacks that are sweetened with simple sugars and look for snacks sweetened with xylitol or sorbitol. You can even purchase xylitol to use in cooking at home. Zylitol is also called birch sugar.

Q. Where can I find xylitol?

Some of the items in the grocery store now contain xylitol as a sweetener. My favorite is the pink 'sugar frree' trident gum my kids always want, but used to contain sachrine (a carcinogen). Now it contains xylitol and says so right on the front. Here are some useful info links and purchase places.

FYI : Xylitol dissolves easily in hot beverages and is useful in recipes, but when you want to sweeten a cold dring such as lemonade, I first dissolve in a couple teaspoons of warm water and then add the sweet liquid to the cold beverage.

Epic Products

Xylitol Now

Emerald Forest Xylitol

A Site That Exposes the Truths of Splenda

http://www.truthaboutsplenda.com/factvsfiction/index.html

FICTION: Splenda is natural sugar without calories.


FICTION: Splenda is safe to eat, even for children.


FICTION: Splenda has been thoroughly tested.


FICTION: Products made with Splenda do not need warning labels.


FICTION: Once eaten, Splenda simply passes through the body.


FICTION: The chlorine found in Splenda is similar to that found in other foods we eat.


FICTION: Consumers have every reason to believe what they see and hear in Splenda’s advertisements.

Fact: In an effort to convince consumers that “Splenda is made from sugar, so it tastes like sugar” and to encourage them to “Think sugar, say Splenda”, the giant drug manufacturer Johnson & Johnson is running a multi-million dollar advertising campaign encouraging the misperception that their artificial sweetener is equivalent to all-natural sugar. Splenda is not sugar and is not natural.

Fiction: Splenda is natural sugar without calories.

Fact: Johnson & Johnson claims that "Splenda is made from sugar, so it tastes like sugar". Johnson & Johnson wants consumers to think that it is natural sugar without calories. The truth is that Splenda is not natural and does not taste like sugar. The sweetness of Splenda derives from a chlorocarbon chemical that contains three atoms of chlorine in every one of its molecules. The manufacturer of this chlorinated compound named it sucralose. The improper use of “ose” in the name creates the illusion that sucralose is natural like sucrose which is the precise name for table sugar. Johnson & Johnson wants consumers to believe that the taste of Splenda is due solely to natural sugar, that is, due to sucrose. However, the manufacturer has patented several chemical processes for making the chlorinated chemical compound it calls sucralose. The patent literature illustrates that sucralose can be chemically manufactured from starting materials that do not require natural sugar. In one patent, for example, the manufacturer constructs sucralose from raffinose by substituting atoms of chlorine for hydroxyl groups in raffinose. Raffinose is a molecule found naturally in beans, and onions and other plants, but unlike natural sucrose, it has very little taste. In another patented process three atoms of chlorine are substituted for three hydroxyl groups in sucrose. The end product of both of these manufacturing processes is an entirely new chlorocarbon chemical called sucralose. Each molecule of sucralose contains three atoms of chlorine which makes it 600 times sweeter than a natural molecule of sugar which contains no chlorine. Splenda has it’s own artificial taste which is due to this chlorinated compound.

Fiction: Splenda is safe to eat, even for children.

Fact: There are no conclusive tests that support this statement. Again, there have been no long-term human studies conducted to determine the potential health effects of Splenda on humans, including children. Until long-term human studies are conducted, no one will know for sure whether Splenda is really safe or unsafe for humans to eat.

Fiction: Splenda has been thoroughly tested.

Fact: There has not been a single long-term human study to determine the potential health effects of Splenda on people. The FDA relied on a few short-term tests when it reviewed the safety of Splenda for human consumption. Worse, these human tests were all conducted by the manufacturer of Splenda, hardly an unbiased source. The vast majority of tests reviewed by the FDA to determine whether Splenda was safe for human consumption were conducted on animals, including rats and rabbits.

Fiction: Products made with Splenda do not need warning labels.

Fact: Splenda is found in nearly 3,500 food products and amazingly, not all of these products list Splenda as an ingredient, and none of them say the product contains chlorine. Furthermore, none of the regulatory agencies or scientific review bodies that have confirmed the safety of sucralose require any warning information to be placed on the labels of products sweetened with sucralose.
Consumers have a right to know exactly what is contained in the food products they buy for themselves and, particularly, for their children. Consumers should be provided with information that allows them to make educated choices about the food products they include in their diets. This is especially true for products that contain Splenda, a chemical substance made with chlorine that has not been the subject of any long-term human studies to determine its health effects on the human body.

Fiction: Once eaten, Splenda simply passes through the body.

Fact: This is what the manufacturer of Splenda claims, and consumers who realize they are actually eating chlorine may hope it is true, but the FDA determined that as much as 27% of sucralose can be absorbed by the body. This is particularly alarming for a chemical substance containing chlorine. Clearly the makers of Splenda are not being entirely forthcoming about their product's influence in the body.

Fiction: The chlorine found in Splenda is similar to that found in other foods we eat.

Fact: The manufacturer of Splenda claims that chlorine is naturally present in such foods as lettuce, mushrooms and table salt, but they never directly state that eating Splenda is the same as eating these foods. Remember, Splenda is not a natural substance, it is an artificial chemical sweetener manufactured by adding three chlorine atoms to a sugar molecule. And again, because there have been no long-term human studies on Splenda to determine the potential health effects on people, no one can say with certainty that the substance is safe to eat.

Fiction: Consumers have every reason to believe what they see and hear in Splenda’s advertisements.

Fact: In an effort to convince consumers that “Splenda is made from sugar, so it tastes like sugar” and to encourage them to “Think sugar, say Splenda”, the giant drug manufacturer Johnson & Johnson is running a multi-million dollar advertising campaign encouraging the misperception that their artificial sweetener is equivalent to all-natural sugar. Splenda is not sugar and is not natural.

Splenda’s advertisements that read “The Dance of the Splenda Plum Fairy,” “Splenda and Spice and Everything Nice,” and “Roses are Red, Violets are Blue, Splenda is Sweet and So Are You” have been characterized by one marketing ethics reporter as nothing but “sleight-of-hand marketing.” Despite all the slick Madison Avenue advertising, the fact remains that Splenda is actually a chemical compound that contains chlorine. The more chlorine atoms, the sweeter the taste. Consumers deserve to know the truth about the food products they are purchasing for themselves and their families.