Sugar Substitutes
RIP Erythritol ... or?
A viral study linking erythritol to heart disease sparked headlines: Is this popular sugar substitute truly dangerous? A critical look at the scientific evidence.
Sugar Substitutes
A viral study linking erythritol to heart disease sparked headlines: Is this popular sugar substitute truly dangerous? A critical look at the scientific evidence.
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In our society, there is a strange phenomenon: we hastily bury things that give people hope and confidence, while we consistently thrust things that provoke fear or uncertainty prominently into the public eye.
This is especially true in the realm of lifestyle and prevention. The COVID policies of recent years were equally a prime example of this. The worst-case scenario was always assumed from the start. Studies that generated the most alarming headlines were shared most frequently and received the most intensive attention.
This can certainly be explained by human brain chemistry, and linked to that is the way modern media works – aimed at generating the maximum possible number of clicks. But do we really want to live this way? Whoever focuses only on the negative will eventually be unable to comprehend or understand that there is also a sunny side.
The good news is: humans are fundamentally not born to be sick. Most diseases that affect us modern humans are self-inflicted – which conversely means we don't have to get them if we put a little effort into our lifestyle.
Meanwhile, even diseases once considered intangible, like depression, are now recognized as metabolic diseases of the brain. This doesn't mean psychotherapy doesn't work or isn't important – but it does mean that people gain an incredibly powerful new key that opens entirely new possibilities. Lifestyle medicine. Still dismissed by some, but increasingly dominant in science.
Just recently we read again about an erythritol study [source no longer available]. Erythritol, a sugar alcohol – in other words, a sweetener – that most of us know at best from protein bars sweetened with it. Or from chewing gum. In the study, erythritol is linked to so-called MACE (major adverse cardiac events) – heart attacks, strokes, and the like. Based on 4,000 participants, the researchers showed that the highest erythritol levels were associated with a 2–5-fold increased risk of cardiovascular events.
The researchers substantiated these findings with several additional experiments showing, for example, that erythritol increases platelet activity (= blood cells that cause blood clots). Finally, eight participants drank 30 g of erythritol in one go and blood levels were created that were 1,000-fold elevated – or still 100-fold higher the next day than the levels that should increase platelet activity.
Sounds convincing, doesn't it? So no media outlet left out the corresponding headline, which of course couldn't be more negative or sensational. The message: Erythritol causes heart attacks.
Looking closely at the study's data, they suggest that even a protein bar with 5 g of erythritol per day in people with pre-existing conditions could increase the risk of heart attack by a factor of 2–5. That would then be in the same league as years of smoking. Does that make sense? Of course not. Anyone still thinking clearly will recognize this as a gross misinterpretation.
We bought the study [source no longer available] to check whether the media headlines were justified. Spoiler alert: erythritol, when consumed as a sweetener, almost certainly has nothing to do with the erythritol levels measured in the study, nor with the observed events. And yet we already know: Erythritol is finished. The formerly blameless sugar substitute has been cancelled and will never recover from the overwhelmingly negative reporting – based on just one study.
Thanks to fear!
