I’ve got some monk fruit sweetener and it says that there are 4 grams carbs per serving yet it claims zero calories. The carbs are erythritol. If 4 grams of sugar had 16 calories, 1 gram of carb has 4 calories, why wouldn’t this monk fruit sweetener have the same calories as sugar?
In: Biology
Semantics game.
Erythritol is an “alcohol sugar”, not a “saccharide” like sucrose (table sugar) or fructose (fruit sugar) . So in the food marketing and labeling world, “sugars” are only monosaccharides and disaccharides that would and in “-ose” at the end of their name, not the “alcohol sugars” that end in “-ol” like mannitol, sorbitol, xylitol etc. Collectively ,these alcohol sugars are called “polyols” and are essentially derived *from* sugars, but have an extra hydrogen atom added to them (either naturally or artificially). Because there is an “official” definition of Sugar as saccharides and these are not, they can use the words “Sugar free” on products that contain the polyols. But they ARE still carbohydrates, so if you are counting carbs, you have to count them, Polyols however don’t raise your blood sugar levels as much as saccharides do, and they don’t promote tooth decay.
A lot of people however cannot properly digest polyols, so be careful, they can cause “intestinal distress” (farting and explosive diarrhea…)
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