It’s not the candy name - it is the ingredient Maltitol, which has a laxative effect. Russell Stover and other sugar free candies contain Maltitol and similar ingredients. The key is to only have one or two, three max at a time. The packaging says that having more than the recommended serving size can cause the laxative effect.
I could swear that you’re me.
I bought a big jar of stevia as a present for the spousal unit, and I cannot stomach it at all. Tastes like a decoction of Sen-Sen mixed with very old dust. Sorry, I’ll stick with my aspartame.
Why would gummy bears be tiny ? they could just be protein and water, and a bit of sweetener ?
Maybe the sweeteners bulk helps with solubility, but that doesn’t prevent them making a long lasting gummy bear… it might be considered dangerous if its too hard to chew … but don’t they make it soft and soluble with glycerine ?
So, can sorbitol and these other sugar alcohols be used as laxatives? I take a teaspoon of PEG 3350 every morning and it barely works. Could one or two sugar-free gummy bears have the same effect? The PEG is rather pricey ($25 for a 510 g supply).
Anyone else really tempted to buy a big pile of these sugar-free gummy bears and leave them in the breakroom at work?
I struggle with the urge to do so on almost a weekly basis.
There seems to be a bit of confusion between sugar alcohols (often used in candies intended for diabetics) and “artificial sweeteners”, which usually refers to very sweet things like aspartame. Sugar alcohols are not calorie-free: they tend to have about half the caloric load as sugars (things like sucralose and aspartame are essentially calorie free, given you need so little). Sugar alcohols are used in sugar-free candy because they have a very low glycemic index, making them good for diabetics. Many sugar free candies will have a warning on them to the effect that “this is not a low calorie food”.
If you compare the nutrition labels for regular vs. “sugar-free” maltitol containing candies, you’ll see that there is indeed a difference in the calories between the two. This is because maltitol is digested slowly, so much of it passes through you without being digested.
I taught a lab last year where we did bomb calorimetry on the two version and talked about why the label listed different calories despite the fact that both yielded the same number of thermodynamic calories.
I give the cat (don’t ask) a small amount of PEG 3350 and some enulose syrup, which is mostly lactulose, in his breakfast every morning. It probably wouldn’t hurt to eat a few sugar free products. Worst case scenario is probably that it doesn’t do anything, assuming you don’t eat the entire bag all at once.
I recently learned sorbitol is one of the ingredients in prunes that contributes to its laxative effect. Have you tried prunes or prune juice?
Same here. Stevia tastes oddly vegetal to me, and not really much like sugar, and I don’t have any of the major genetic taste aversions I know of. (I’m not a supertaster; and while cilantro did taste like soap to me first, I got used to it after a few tastings and love it.) My favorite sugar substitute is the mix of ace K and I think it’s aspartame (or is it ace K and sucralose? Whatever the common mix is.) Aspartame on its own is fine, but a bit “chemically” and “dry.” Sucralose is weirdly oily. And I can’t remember what ace K tastes like on its own, but mixed with one of those two, it seems to cancel the objectionable part out.
Never knew about the laxative thing with sugar free gummies. Interesting and good to know.
All I know is that years ago, I got a bunch of the sugar-free gummy bears from the bulk bin at the grocery, ate a bunch of them, and had quite a bit of violent diarrhea the next day. I was at home, so I assumed that it was something I ate and forgot about it.
Later on, my wife (fiance at the time) and I had a date night at her apartment and I got some more of those as a snack while we watched a movie. Next day we went for lunch at a restaurant, and the violence of the diarrhea was such that it spooked a guy out of the bathroom who my wife overheard talking to his wife about it. I realized it was the gummy bears by the odd fruity smell (gross, huh?) and timing, which was almost exactly the same as the last time I’d had the gummy bears.
I’d think to actually use them as a laxative, you’d have to do a binary search of sorts. Eat like 50, see if it gives you diarrhea. If so, then eat 25, and see what happens. If yes, then eat 12, if no, then eat 37. Lather, rinse repeat, until you get things where you want them.