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With the low-carbohydrate craze sweeping the country, it is inevitable that you have seen some product, sign, or commercial advertising a low-carb product. It seems that nearly every type of food has the version you have been buying for years and then, right next to it on the shelf, a low-carb version of the same food. How did these foods reduce the number of carbohydrates? Closer inspection may lead to some new discoveries in the ingredient list or on the nutrition facts label. Sugar alcohol is one of these ingredients you may not have noticed before. It is sometimes used to reduce the amount of sugar and, for those of you on the Atkins diet, "bad" carbohydrates in foods.
Sugar alcohol has been used in diabetic specialty foods for years. Polyol is another name for sugar alcohol and they both are simply a sugar free sweetner. The name sugar alcohol comes about because the structure of these sweetners resembles sugar while another part resembles alcohol. They are not actually sugar and do not contain ethanol, the kind of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages. The advantages they provide over regular sugar include: -fewer calories per gram, -smaller increases in blood glucose and insulin levels, - do not promote tooth decay, - products last longer because molds and bacteria do not grow as well on sugar alcohols.
Sugar alcohols are used in a wide range of products in the U.S. From chewing gum and candy to ice cream and baked goods, there are several sugar alcohols that may be found on the label. The common sugar alcohols are mannitol, sorbitol, xylitol, lactitol, isomalt, maltitol, and hydrogenated starch hydrolysates (HSH). However, these are still carbohydrates. They are slowly and only partially absorbed from the gut and therefore have little influence on blood glucose levels. The foods
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