I have long suspected that many of the
sugar substitutes were overrated. Now the word is out on one of
them, sugar alcohol erythritol. This commonly used sugar replacement
used in low-calorie foods that people eat to lose weight may actually
have the opposite effect.
The sugar alcohol erythritol occurs
naturally in foods like pears and watermelons but has been used as a
sugar replacement in low-calorie foods. It is found in the sugar
replacement products Zsweet, Zero and Sweet Simplicity. Truvia is a
mix of erythritol and stevia.
The study was a collaboration of
researchers at Cornell, Braunschweig University of Technology in
Germany and the University of Luxembourg, on a discovery-based
analysis to identify metabolomic markers linked to weight gain and
increased fat mass in students transitioning to college life.
"About 75 percent of this
population experiences weight gain during the transition,"
Patricia Cassano, professor in the Division of Nutritional Sciences
at Cornell, said in a press release. "With this in mind, it
is important to identify biomarkers of risk that could guide its
understanding and prevention."
Researchers found that people who
gained weight and abdominal fat over the course of a year had 15
times higher blood erythritol at the beginning of the year compared
to those who were stable or had lost weight and fat mass.
The study was part of Cornell's ENHANCE
project by the Division of Nutritional Sciences to understand how the
transition to college affects changes in diet, weight and metabolism
in students.
"With the finding of a
previously unrecognized metabolism of glucose to erythritol and given
the erythritol-weight gain association, further research is needed to
understand whether and how this pathway contributes to weight-gain
risk," Cassano said.
No comments:
Post a Comment