Artificial Sweeteners alcohol content?

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JustaShooter
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Re: Artificial Sweeteners alcohol content?

Post by JustaShooter »

AlanM wrote:
Suckerspawn wrote:Erythritrol is not ethanol.
Very good point and WebMD says it's much less harmful for you than sugar.
Interesting - from what I can find, the Now Foods liquid strevia says "organic alcohol" - does that mean Erythritrol?

And either way, is Erythritrol intoxicating to humans, or not since it isn't ethanol? (Sorry, I'm pretty clueless about such things.)
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Re: Artificial Sweeteners alcohol content?

Post by djthomas »

Sugar alcohol is neither sugar nor alcohol though it will probably kill your dog.
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Re: Artificial Sweeteners alcohol content?

Post by Face »

JustaShooter wrote:
AlanM wrote:
Suckerspawn wrote:Erythritrol is not ethanol.
Very good point and WebMD says it's much less harmful for you than sugar.
Interesting - from what I can find, the Now Foods liquid strevia says "organic alcohol" - does that mean Erythritrol?

And either way, is Erythritrol intoxicating to humans, or not since it isn't ethanol? (Sorry, I'm pretty clueless about such things.)

No it is not - but your gut may wish it was. In many, myself included, excess gas and issues up to & including diarrhea. I have to read any of the sugar free labels for any of the ***tols, sorbotol. manitol, etc.

I think it's near impossible to get intoxicated via non-liquid form of alcohol.
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Re: ***WARNING***

Post by CroManGun »

razzle wrote:
JustaShooter wrote:What brand / product is this from? Stevia extract by itself has no alcohol, and the brands I've looked at do not show alcohol in their back-of-package ingredients.

In any case, even at 11% you have zero to worry about unless you are consuming this stuff by the pound.
One of them is distributed by Whole Foods its called " Stevia Extract." The other one is distributed by Now Foods and it is called "Better Stevia." They are both liquid sweeteners and both of them contain 11% alcohol.
I've been using granulated Stevia for years. Get it at Walmart. Boxes of 40 & 80 packets.
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Re: Artificial Sweeteners alcohol content?

Post by painiac »

JustaShooter wrote:
AlanM wrote:
Suckerspawn wrote:Erythritrol is not ethanol.
Very good point and WebMD says it's much less harmful for you than sugar.
Interesting - from what I can find, the Now Foods liquid strevia says "organic alcohol" - does that mean Erythritrol?

And either way, is Erythritrol intoxicating to humans, or not since it isn't ethanol? (Sorry, I'm pretty clueless about such things.)
Most of the artificial sweeteners are sweeter than sugar but are not absorbed from the intestines. The body doesn't know what to do with them so they are simply not digested: they just pass straight through. This is why they cause diarrhea in some people, particularly when larger amounts are ingested. Erythritol is a little different: it actually IS partly absorbed and then excreted in the urine. However, it is not digested, either.

Artificial sweeteners all share the quality of not being digested, so provide no calories. However, there is mounting evidence that the sensation of sweetness may provoke the same insulin response as sugar, regardless of the fact that no sugar enters the bloodstream: it is insulin resistance (not calories) that results in type 2 diabetes and all of its negative health effects. I am not saying that artificial sweeteners are to be avoided. I am only saying that if you consume a lot of sweets, replacing some of them with artificial sweeteners will not help you lose weight or get healthier. In other words, it is excess rather than just sugar that is bad for you. No surprise there.

If you want a bit of a chemistry explanation: As already pointed out, sugar alcohols have a structural similarity to the simple alcohols. A molecule with a hydroxyl group (-OH) attached somewhere along the carbon chain is an alcohol, and the chemical name is denoted with the suffix "-ol" (as in "ethanol" or "sorbitol"). However, only those alcohols which when oxidized are reduced to an acetaldehyde group are capable of producing intoxication. Sugar alcohols do not do this.
Ethanol is the classic intoxicant. Methanol (wood alcohol) will also produce intoxication, but it breaks down to formaldehyde which then breaks down to formic acid. If you drink enough methanol to become intoxicated, the excess formic acid will damage the retina, resulting in blindness.
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Re: Artificial Sweeteners alcohol content?

Post by Morne »

As others have said - not all alcohols are the same. The sweetener alcohols are not intoxicating and won't show up as ethanol on blood/breath/urine tests. Relax.

Personally, I choose Splenda. YMMV.

The old moonshiners (eventually) figured out to cut the "heads" off their runs to reduce methanol in the final product. Blind men don't make for repeat customers, after all. But the good old boys weren't as picky about cutting the "tails". In the "tail" of a distillation run you get the heavier alcohols like propanol, butanol, pentanol, hexanol, et cetera. These aren't intoxicating but some of them are very good as a general anesthesia. IIRC pentanol was used for this purpose as far back as the US Civil War. This heavy alcohol content gave moonshine some of its reputed ability to "knock a man out" even if he was normally very tolerant of large quantities of alcohol. It doesn't matter how robust your liver is when you get a slug of pentanol - you're going straight to dream land. :idea:
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Re: Artificial Sweeteners alcohol content?

Post by laserbiz »

https://u.osu.edu/chowline/2015/04/03/s ... r-alcohol/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Sugar alcohols aren’t really sugar and aren’t really alcohol.

Without getting steeped in a chemistry lesson, the chemical structure of sugar alcohols resembles both sugar and alcohol (hence the name) but is different than both. That’s why you won’t get drunk on sugar alcohol, and why you might see it listed as an ingredient in gum, candy and other foods labeled as “sugar-free.”
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