Sugar alcohols are not free carbs

(The Journal Gazette) - I’ve written about the “net carbs” concept, which started with subtracting fiber (an indigestible carbohydrate) from the total carbohydrate count of foods. This approach allows far more vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds into our low-carbohydrate diets. But food manufacturers, anxious to capitalize on a trend, and on the American desire to “change without changing,” have added more and more substances to the list of carbohydrates that we supposedly do not have to count. Chief among these are sugar alcohols, also known as polyols. Sugar alcohols are widely used in commercially produced low-carb products such as candy, cookies and ice cream.

What are sugar alcohols? These sweeteners, derived from various plant sources have names such as maltitol, sorbitol, lactitol, erythritol, xylitol and isomalt.

These long-chain carbohydrates are slowly and incompletely digested and absorbed. However, sugar alcohols are not completely indigestible like fiber. I am afraid that the food industry’s idea that we can simply ignore sugar alcohols is too optimistic.

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