Sugar Substitute, is it an Angel or a Demon for Human Health?

Quietly, there are more and more sweet-tasting but sugar-free drinks and foods around us, all of which use one type of ingredient, sugar substitute.
There are many types of sugar substitutes, natural and synthetic, hundreds of times sweeter than white sugar, and less sweet than white sugar.

In general, however, these sugar substitutes are designed to replace white sugar in food products and have almost no calories, or significantly less or even negligible calories for the same sweetness.

Sugar substitutes are metabolized in a different way than regular white sugar and do not cause a rise in blood sugar. This use of sugar substitutes and the reduction of white sugar is important for reducing the risk of obesity, dental caries, and cardiovascular disease.

In particular, sugar alcohols not only prevent dental caries, but also have a beneficial effect on intestinal microorganisms.

Among them, stevia and erythritol are the two popular sugar substitutes that have attracted the most attention from the public, but my feeling is that these two names sound healthier and have a better "audience". Unlike the artificial sugar substitute sucralose, which is obviously safe and tastes good, but because of the word "chlorine", it sounds toxic.

The sweetness of stevia is also very high, 200-300 times that of white sugar, and the calories are negligible. Hei tea also launched a service to add 1 yuan to exchange for stevia. Coca-Cola is also the first to market in New Zealand with a stevia-formulated cola.

However, stevia has a bitter aftertaste, so the market is using stevia with other ingredients to make a compound sweetener to balance and eliminate this bitter taste.

Erythritol is different from other sugar alcohols in that it has a very small molecular weight, how it is eaten in and how it is excreted, it is not metabolized in the body, so the calories are really zero.

European Food Safety Authority EFSA

There is now enough scientific information to prove that, like other sugar substitutes, powerful sweeteners can make the increase in blood sugar after eating smaller (compared to sugar).

U.S. Food and Drug Administration FDA

Power sweeteners are commonly used as sugar substitutes. They are many times sweeter than sucrose, so they contribute zero or very few calories. Like other food ingredients used in the U.S., strong sweeteners must be shown to be safe.

American Heart Association

Replacing sugary foods and beverages with non-nutritive sweeteners is a way to reduce calories and achieve and maintain normal body weight. They can also help diabetics maintain blood sugar levels when used as a substitute for sugar-added foods and beverages.

Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics

The Academy believes that a range of nutritive sweeteners, as well as non-nutritive sweeteners, can be safely consumed by consumers while following existing U.S. government nutrition recommendations (e.g., the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and the Dietary Reference Intakes) and individual health goals and preferences.

National Cancer Institute

The results of carcinogenicity tests of FDA-approved sweeteners show no clear evidence of an association between sweeteners and cancer in humans.

In conclusion, sugar substitutes bring much more to humans,  but it is not recommended to completely let down your guard on sweets and crave sweet flavors without fear because of the availability of sugar substitutes. Our goal is to eat less and less sweet, not to eat sweeter and sweeter sugar substitute foods.