Xylitol is truly the darling of sugar substitutes today. The American Dietetic Association touts its use, with this sugar alcohol sold alone and as a sweetener in a variety of processed foods. Health benefits include a reduced glycemic response compared with sucrose, increased absorption of B vitamins and calcium, and even a reduction in dental caries risk.
Consequently, people with blood sugar issues are flocking to processed foods containing this alternative sweetener as a way to satisfy that sweet tooth without the downside of exacerbating the risk factors for Metabolic Syndrome. This condition is known for the markedly increased likelihood of developing heart disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes.
Even the healthfood community almost universally considers this sugar alcohol to be a healthy substitute for sugar. A primary reason is that it doesn’t directly contribute toward the growth of intestinal yeasts aka Candida.
Have you noticed that the check out aisles at health food stores are typically loaded with chocolates and other sweets containing at least some xylitol? The truth is that I have yet to talk with any health-conscious person who suggests to me any downside other than the potential for intestinal cramps if you get too much.
Xylitol is Naturally Found in Nature
Xylitol is, after all, a naturally occurring substance. Manufacturers of xylitol market it as derived from xylan. The fibers of many plants contain it, including berries, oats, beets, sugar cane and birch. Sounds pretty harmless at first glance.
The FDA has even granted xylitol GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) status. You can’t get any safer than that, right?
Manufacturing Process
It is true that xylitol is a naturally occurring substance. However, manufactured xylitol is another matter entirely. Food manufacturers produce it using the industrialized process of sugar hydrogenation. In order to hydrogenate anything, a catalyst is needed. In this case, Raney nickel is used which is a powdered nickel-aluminum alloy. (1, 2)
This poses the risk of heavy metal residue and contamination. Nickel, by the way, is a recognized carcinogen and aluminum is associated with the development of dementia. Heavy metals in the body are notoriously difficult to eliminate with frequent use of infrared sauna probably a good idea.
This alternative sweetener doesn’t seem quite so warm and fuzzy anymore, does it?
There is currently no literature on any detrimental health effects of consuming hydrogenated sugar. However, food manufacturers widely used hydrogenated fats for decades before the very damaging effects of cardiovascular health became widely known!
Given the violent industrialized process that is required to produce a hydrogenated sugar like xylitol, it would seem wise to avoid it based on the very poor track record of hydrogenated foods in general.
Most Xylitol Sourced from GMO Corn
While it is true that xylitol can be derived from the xylan of birch trees, xylan is also found in corn cobs. It is much cheaper to use corn instead of birch bark to derive xylitol and so what do you think manufacturers prefer? Corn, of course.
Therefore, unless the label of a xylitol-containing product specifically notes that it is from birch or another nonGMO source, xylitol is very likely from genetically modified corn or possibly GMO sugar beets.
This is the same problem as high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and white sugar from beets. Food manufacturers rely heavily on these sweeteners in the production of sodas and sports drinks.
You get a dose of GMOs with every sip! More on GMO dangers including sterility and stomach holes at the provided link.
Usage Contributes to Gut Imbalance
The digestive process does not break down sugar alcohols like food. Rather, xylitol arrives intact into the intestines.
At that point, a process called “passive diffusion” takes place. This means that the xylitol draws water into the bowels. Only a partial breakdown is the end result. The unmetabolized portion ferments providing the perfect environment for undesirable bacteria to thrive and grow.
It is true that xylitol itself does not feed candida directly as sugar does. As a result, this artificial sweetener is even promoted as a useful part of the Candida Diet. Unfortunately, the fermentation of undigested xylitol in the gut most definitely can exacerbate yeast problems. Don’t be fooled by this argument!
This is exactly why consuming xylitol can make some folks so gassy and even trigger cramping and diarrhea. Gut pathogens having a heyday in your intestines give off a lot of smelly toxins!
Other Little Known Problems
Xylitol can contribute to acid reflux problems. As a result, those who have issues in this area should avoid it for that reason alone. Chronic acid reflux is a serious problem that can lead to cancer of the esophagus and larynx.
In addition, those who suffer from seizures of any kind should stay away from this alternative sweetener as it can increase the frequency of epileptic attacks.
Two Pieces of Xylitol Gum Can Kill a Rat?
According to unpublished lab tests, approximately 1.65 grams of xylitol kills a 100-gram rat half the time.
Two little pieces of xylitol gum contain about .7 – 1 gram. This is probably enough to meet the definition of rat poison.
Cavity Prevention
Many people are chewing xylitol gum due to compelling scientific evidence for cavity prevention. What about children, however?
Rami Nagel, author of Cure Tooth Decay, doesn’t even recommend xylitol gum for this purpose. His research for any long term safety data turned up the following:
- Epidemiology: No information found
- Teratogenicity: No information found
- Reproductive Effects: No information found
- Mutagenicity: No information found
- Neurotoxicity: No information found
In summary, using this modern substance officially renders you a guinea pig, my friend! It seems that any benefits of cavity prevention are outweighed by the fact that there is no actual safety data backing up its use.
Safe Uses of Xylitol
Given all the problems that consumption of xylitol can trigger, it seems best to bypass the use of this sugar substitute on a regular basis.
Can it ever be helpful? Does it have any benefits whatsoever?
Potentially so. The only time I personally would ever consider using xylitol is to help resolve a childhood ear or sinus infection in order to prevent the use of drug-based antibiotics.
There is evidence that this popular sugar alcohol can indeed help encourage a healthy balance of beneficial bacteria found in the ear canal and sinus cavities. Products like this incorporate xylitol for this purpose.
A therapeutic dose can help resolve infection in these areas quickly with no medication required.
Thus, if you choose to use it, make sure it is sparingly and therapeutically (not as food). Also, make sure it does not come from a GMO source like corn!
References
(1) Xylitol production via catalytic hydrogenation of sugarcane
(2) Catalytic hydrogenation of xylose to xylitol using ruthenium catalyst on NiO modified TiO2 support
(3) Cure Tooth Decay by Rami Nagel
(4) Sugar-Free Blues: Everything You Wanted to Know about Artificial Sweeteners
More Information
Yacon: Healthy Syrup or Healthfood Hype?
Jaggery: India’s Sweet Gift
Can you please provide any proofs for what you are claiming? Do any particular studies show the negative effects you write about? Why do you use the rat argument when nobody recommends feeding xylitol to rats? Chocolate is similarly dangerous for dogs, should this be the reason we are not to consume any chocolate? I can understand one should always be careful introducing a new ingredient to their diets but sorry your article sounds to me like a hate article without specifying the reasons.
I chew Trident ALMOST all of the time. Its my favorite kind of gum. My mom, my boyfriend, and lots of people in my family eat my gum when I pull it out. I normally chew between 1-2 packs of 18 sticks of Trident gum per week. I never really looked up what Xylitol was, I just knew that on the package it said it helped prevent cavities and was recommended by the ADA which I find ok. But now I am noticing that just about EVERYTHING these days is bad for us. What do I have to do? Go away and live on a farm so that all of my things come natural? You can never be too sure, the term organic is used very loosely. Some days you don’t know what you’re eating!
No Ria, you don’t have to pack up and move to a farm. Just make really wise (informed) food choices. Shop for organics (still a safe, reliable label) at your grocer or farm markets. Follow paleo guidelines and use Grade B maple syrup and honey to sweeten foods, just not very much or often. Depend on mostly vegetables, some fruit, grass fed meats, pastured poultry and eggs and only have paleo “treats occasionally to fend off a complete retreat back to your old way of eating.
I have actually reversed fibromyalgia by eating this way and feel better than ever. I completed this reversal in about 6 months but I will never go back to my old way of eating as I am bent on staying prescription free til the end of my days.
I have multiple posts and recipes on my site. Just click my name to go to it.
I recently succumbed to sales talk and bought some GreenZilla health drink which contains xylitol. I’m not sure which ingredient caused it but the three times I have used it I was dizzy, sense of smell changed somehow 6-7 hours later (its hard to describe that one) and had earaches about 6-7 hours later.
Im just going to say there are a few things (five actually) that are incorrect. As chemical engineer I will say that you people should do a little more homework… like read a book not a blog. Like Chemistry 101. Im also curious as why GMO vs Non GMO would make a difference in this case. xylitol substrates are at the molecular level. which is the same in both cases. Youre not eating the corn, your extracting the a molecule from it. Not only that ….oh forget it. why argue.
Have a great day.
Your comment is the most sensible one I’ve read in a long time. Just wanted to thank you for posting it.
Thank you, Justin.
Hey, don’t give up just as you were getting started! I’d like to know what the other things were you found to be incorrect in the article. Some of us are actually thinking and would like more information and analysis, if you have it. That’s not quibbling, that’s potentially a valuable contribution and I’m sure the article’s author would be just as happy to be corrected if it means helping people.
Please don’t stop posting because you think we’re not listening, really appreciate you’re comments. Wish I understood more of what you know.
And you Justin, chemical engineer or not do not know much about GMOs. What do you work for Monsanto????
just so you know… all corn nowadays has been genetically modified from its origins in simple grain and maize by centuries, if not millennia, by way of human domestication. GMO doesn’t necessarily mean its bad. its just another tool humans have used to better their lives.
the MAIN reason I can see someone saying use non gmo is because they have NOT been proven safe by a scientific consensus. they CANNOT be contained, and DO contaminate organic crops. so basically, if you buy gmo’s you are allowing them to keep producing the crap crops that are hurting the environment. thankfully the area i live in has NO gmo’s and no one uses roundup or pesticides, and I grow my own food but i don’t know how to make xylitol myself, so I always buy organic when I can.
I would like to let people know that after eating two biscuits that my mother had baked using xylitol that within minutes I went into an intense reaction with vomiting, stomach craps, diarrhoea, passing out, blurred vision, pins and needles in my fingers and blood in my urine and diarrhoea. This was intense for 2 hours after which the light headedness eased and the frequency of the vomiting and diarrhoea reduced. The vomiting stopped 9 hours later and the diarrhoea the next day.
Now 4 days later I still have cramps, no energy, little appetite and can only eat small amounts.
My doctor said it was probably an anaphylactic reaction with some kidney damage even though I didn’t have swelling of the face or throat and that if I consumed any again it will be worse and possibly fatal. I now have an Epi Pen and have to read read every label. I am 49 years old and do not have any other food allergies.
We are sure it was the Xylitol because my mother started using it occasionally in baking after being told she is getting close to having diabetes 2. She had used it in a slice she baked 4 days earlier of which I only had a taste and ended up vomiting all afternoon ( I thought I had a virus). Zylitol was the only common ingredient in the slice and biscuits.
After this I did a google search and found that to make Zylitol that the base is natural, usually corn, beets, sugar cane or the like which is then hydrogenated and soaked in Sulphuric Acid. I googled Sulphuric Acid and Wikipedia describes it as a highly corrosive strong mineral acid. Corrosive on materials like metal, living tissue and stone.
I may be a minority but this stuff really isn’t as safe as its made out to be. In that two hours of severe reaction I felt like I had been poisoned and I personally would like to see it removed from the market.
Whilst I am sympathetic to your reactions, I have to agree with Justin. I too am a chemical engineer. I’m not sure if Justin is in the field of pharmaceutical manufacture, but what he mentions makes sense. The company I work for extracts a naturally occurring chemical from a plant under strict GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) guidelines. The final product (active pharmaceutical ingredient) has been thoroughly tested for health effects including toxicity, dose ranging, pharmacokinetics, trace impurity evaluation and a whole host of other tests well before it went to market.
If xylitol is produced in a GMP facility, then it too would have undergone extensive testing before being made available for consumption. The FDA need to carefully analyse data on new products before giving them a GRAS rating.
On the matter of sulphuric acid, I would be extremely surprised if it was still present in the final product to the extent it would cause problems. Our own stomach contains hydrochloric acid that would be significantly more concentrated than any trace (if any) sulphuric acid in the product.
If the symptoms you experienced occurred within minutes of eating, it does sound like an allergic reaction. But before recommending it be ‘removed from the market’ (which sounds just like the words spoken by a market competitor), I would be contacting the company who makes the product and even the FDA to notify them of your reactions and get more information from them. If enough people have similar reactions, they can reassess its health safety rating and amend accordingly.
Mike and Justin, being part of a growing group of people who have become allergic to the alpha galactose sugar in mammal tissue, I know that any group of people who are allergic to something have a very, very hard time getting their allergy recognized. Writing to the manufacturer would seem useless to most people. Writing to the FDA seems hopeless. Even those of you who are more educated about chemistry are looking for scientific proof before believing. What are people to do? They exchange info about their experiences and hope that someone will take them seriously and try to figure out what is causing them their reactions. People try to figure out what is going and will offer explanations and suggestions, hoping some will make a difference.
Wow – my brother has the same reaction to all freshwater fish. And shellfish. And peanut butter. I guess since he particularly had that reaction, none of us should eat any of those things. I’m sorry you had such a horrible reaction to (probably) the xylitol. That doesn’t mean it’s not safe for consumption for most. Also, just because sulphuric acid may be used to manufacture the product does not mean that there is remaining acid in the finished product. When I make homemade tomato sauce in my pan at home, than technically iron, coke, limestone, charcoal, anthracite, natural gas and wood are all used “as part of the process” for making my tomato sauce. They are the ingredients in my cast iron pot, the gas I use to cook it, and the wooden spoon I use to stir it. I also use a healthy dose of dihydrogen monoxide as well. Which is the chemical name for water. I’ve never tried xylitol at all yet, and so I am using Google to see what the prevailing opinions are. The problem is the truth lies somewhere between the people trying to peddle the stuff who say it’s the best thing ever, and “chicken little” type blogs, who say it’s going to destroy us all. Both types of sites/pages/blogs make their decision, and then skew the facts to fit their opinion. Again, I’m sorry that you had to deal with the reaction you did, and I may suffer the same, but although fish and peanuts can easily KILL my brother, I’ve never heard him suggest they should be “removed from the market”…..
I just want to contribute to this discusion that some of the comments in this thread strike a chord.I have noticed increased losenes of stools since I HAVE REPLACED XYLITOL FOR SUGAR.However I beleive that the major contributing factor in losing 35kg in the last 6 monmths has been the fact that I have replaced sugar with xylitol.I will now research the other factors mentioned here.However my health advisors say that the weight loss will have a far better effect on my health than the negaitive effects of the xylitol.Whatever it takes
i have a hard time finding “total sweet” made from birch – i will keep looking
Hello. There is not a lot of negative data surrounding Xylitol on the internet for humans, however, I thought I would contribute my own personal experience. I began using Xylitol 1.5 years ago, and a bit over a year ago I was diagnosed with epilepsy. I put a lot of this in my coffee’s and drink a lot of coffee, so my consumption was rather large. Probably unreasonably so, but I was under the impression this stuff was 100% ‘safe’.
We are now 95% confident that Xylitol was the cause of my epilepsy. I have only just stopped using it, and it is early days (too early to truly know for sure), but I feel so much better for stopping. My head feels so much clearer, almost immediately.
It also caused my kidney function to drop to as little as 20% after one of my epileptic attacks (and all my vomiting) if our theory is correct.
I would advise anyone to stay away from consuming very large amounts of this stuff, or to at least listen, closely, to your body. I might be the minority, but I still demonstrate a clear possibility of toxicity from this substance in humans in high doses. It is the only major change made to my diet in 10 years and it is the only substance we have been able to link with any of my epileptic attacks.
– Sam
Hi Sam, your problem, (Epilepsy) could it have been caused by drinking excessive amounts of coffee? That stuff is definitely a bad addictive drug.
Ibby.
I understand that to be another possibility, however we feel we are able to nail it down to Xylitol due to the timeline of events…. I began drinking coffee 10 years before I began putting Xylitol in it. My system has never had a reaction until we were recommended Xylitol, 4 months later my life hit the fan, and things weren’t the same for a long time….
Until the past month. I have remained seizure free for almost a full month since I quit drinking Xylitol, but I still drink coffee and put sugar in it instead. I felt great this past month and gained back a lot of skills I felt I was losing…
I know coffee isn’t good for you, one day I’ll have to make that choice to cut back and if seizures continue it may be my next resort. For now, though, we have had very positive results from getting rid of Xylitol.
I will keep this thread up to date with my situation. Still seizure free for now! 😀
– Sam
Just updating my situation. 2 months later I have had another seizure.
Stress was the trigger, and it began in my sleep (biting my lip). It was still muuuuch milder then my seizures were at the peak of having Xylitol in my diet, and we are still very confident it caused my epilepsy (though it may not be a ‘trigger’ for it).
I was having a LOT of this stuff, please take that into account, 3-4 teaspoons in every coffee and 5 coffee’s a day roughly.
I have considered many other things in life that could have caused my epilepsy but experience tells us we hit the right track when we got rid of Xylitol. I had NASTY seizures before… The recent ones have been mild, and it took 6 months after putting Xylitol into my system for me to start having seizures, it could take a little while yet to heal fully considering I still drank it through my seizures for a whole year almost (it just took us a long time to realize it could be this stuff because we had 100% trust in it).
If you haven’t experience problems, that’s great! It is a good substitute taste-wise. But if anyone suddenly develops epilepsy and this is in your diet – get rid of it I say, see what happens. Things have been positive for my life.
If this stuff doesn’t solve it fully perhaps I will be looking into my general consumption of coffee (although I had already cut back on that stuff a lot anyway to be honest!)
This set of messages are here mainly for those who have developed epilepsy and started taking this stuff recently at all. I say if that is the case – get rid of it. See what happens, perhaps it will work for others who develop epilepsy so late in life.
Do you even know what a GO is? Genetically modified organisms are everywhere. Your dog is genetically modified unless it is a purebred wolf. Corn was originally “genetically modified” through selective breeding. How exactly does that make a GMO dangerous?
Dogs are not GMOs. Genetic modification and selective breeding are two entirely different concepts.
Do your homework on GMO’s. Cross breeding two plants from nature is night and day from how a GMO plant comes into existence. When two plants from nature are grafted and nature accepts the grafting, than its origin and derivative is from nature. Ignorance is no longer bliss, it is deadly. The American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) urges doctors to prescribe non-GMO diets for all patients. They cite animal studies showing organ damage, gastrointestinal and immune system disorders, accelerated aging, and infertility. Human studies show how genetically modified (GM) food can leave material behind inside us, possibly causing long-term problems. Genes inserted into GM soy, for example, can transfer into the DNA of bacteria living inside us, and that the toxic insecticide produced by GM corn was found in the blood of pregnant women and their unborn fetuses.
Many governments have banned GMO’s because the evidence of their harm far outweighs the proven false arguments of higher crop yields, etc. Monsanto is suing a new farmer very 3 weeks… Seriously, wake up and smell the double deccepicinno. GMOs are causing infertility and has been directly linked to many diseases. And, if you dig deeper, you will find the pandemic rise in gluten insensitivity and celiac disease just so happens to be related to when GMO’s were laced into our food supplies.
There’s a depopulation agenda, aka soft kill technique that’s in full force… is that easy to swallow or fathom? No. However, the alternative is to continue to stay anesthetized by the mass weapons of distractions and pretend that WE are complicit and the problem if WE don’t own our responsibility and sovereignty, individually and collectively.
You are so right on, I’ve been doing a lot of reading on population control, and global warming, and mas confusion about diets, vegan, paleo and on and on. We can’t eat anymore without a degree in chemistry and nutrition. I’ve been experiencing weakness in my legs, bloating and leg cramps and lack of concentration and am giving up xylitol immediately to see if these symptoms go away. I don’t bother chewing gum anymore, its loaded with artificial sweeteners..
I think you need to research what a gmo truly is it is not a high bred its been genetically altered in a lab do your homework