I noticed Vitamin Water 10 in the store today, which I figured would have sucralose or aspartame in it. Apparently not: it’s sweetened with erythritol, which, according to the Wikipedia article on the substance, is so great it may as well cure cancer:
Great, a little less sweet, does not impact tooth health, has almost no calories, and won’t make you poop your pants like sorbitol. I like all four of those things. So what’s the problem? Has erythritol been in common use previously and I just never noticed? If not, why wasn’t it used before? In soft drinks, why would anyone not use it (aside from risking another New Coke like fiasco)?
Considering the rest of the Wikipedia article, it looks like it has some particular quirks that limit its feasibility for a wide range of products.
If not mixed into a liquid, it will have a minty, cooling effect which brings out the waxy flavor of any fats that might be present.
Ultimately, it doesn’t taste much like sugar, so you’ll generally need to blend it with other sweeteners which do have calories or cause gastric problems, etc.
If used in any dry product, it will have a dehydrating effect, unless you happen to use it in conjunction with something which has a hydrating effect.
For most applications it either doesn’t work or would need to be mixed with some other thing which may or may not be a proper ingredient for what you are trying to do, and may or may not offset all the advantages of using erythritol.
Unfortunately, internet kooks seem to have convinced lots of people that aspartame is teh EVILZ and is responsible for everything from cancer to 9/11. :rolleyes:
I use erythritol in baking because I love the sugary crunch it gives to things like cookie dough. (Ok, I guess it’s not technically baking if you don’t cook it, but you get the idea.) It’s too cooling (and expensive) to use on its own, but combined with polydextrose and sucralose you can get a really good flavor with minimal use of any of the sweeteners. Google “sweetener synergy” for more information.
Maybe I’m just an internet kook, but I won’t use aspartame.
They taste different - at least to me (people taste aspartame differently). I’ve purchased bulk erythitol and it tastes exactly like sugar but has a bit of a “cool feeling” to it. Sort of like pressed sugar candy a-la candy necklaces or a Fun Dip/Lik-m-Aid stick. Aspartame has a definite aftertaste to it and erthitol most definitely does not.
Erythitol also has a very different feel to it. It feels like tinier sugar granules and aspartame feels like light flakes. I don’t know what that means on a molecular level in food processing…but I suspect that is a difference at least for solid foods.
OK, and I’d consider that a valid reason for not wanting to use aspartame.
Really I asked the question to set up the kind of answer Colophon gave – that it causes cancer and 9/11.
I myself drink aspartame-sweetened drinks and I get tired of having to defend myself from my colleagues and their “no smoke without fire” arguments.
As for Erythritol, it needs a different name. I have to admit I read it incorrectly the first couple of times and it’s vaguely sciencey-sounding, so must be bad for you, like fructose (unlike natural-sounding things, like fruit sugar, which are good for you).
And “sugar-alcohol” sadly includes the word “alcohol”.
Yeah, we touched on this a little bit in this past thread. Some people do not detect an aftertaste, some people can deal with the aftertaste and some people think it’s the most vile taste ever.
It’s not just Internet kooks. Some of them are professional kooks (or at least aspiring professionals).
For example, I taught a computer lab part of a senior-level class for nutrition majors. The goal was for them to learn how to use computers to do fliers and web sites to promote nutrition information. One student decided it was perfectly appropriate to a modified Nutrasweet logo that said “Brain Cancer” and to repeat all sorts of totally unscientific research. She did her web project based on the conclusion that green tea prevents heart attacks, citing only that orientals have lower incidents of heart attacks and drink more green tea. She got an A in the class and graduated the next month.
Forgot I had posted this thread! Thanks all for the answers. It sounds like some manufacturers have found a way to work it in to their products economically, and Truvia contains both erythritol and a stevia-based sweetener, though I’m not sure of the cost.
The reason I was checking the ingredient label is because drinking “diet” drinks that contain aspartame give me a really bad, sickening headache just a few minutes after ingestion. Aspartame also tastes quite a bit different than sugar. I don’t really know how to describe the difference, it just tastes kind of “flat” (not like lack of carbonation). So it’s kind of frustrating - low calorie gets me interested because I don’t really want my soft drinks as sweet as most are made (a couple drops of lemon juice in sparkling water is good for me) and hey, why not drink low calorie stuff? But then they have sweetener anyway, which gives me a headache.