Artificial sweeteners are often bad news in terms of your health. Take aspartame, an artificial sweetener used in everything from Diet Coke to sugar-free gum. Marketed under the brand name NutraSweet, aspartame is manufactured and distributed by Monsanto, the multinational corporation that brought the world genetically modified seeds and Agent Orange. It’s been linked to cancer, brain damage, and bizarrely, is scientifically proven to cause compulsive over-eating disorders. Dieters beware of dieting products.
Erythritol doesn’t sound very whoesome or natural by name, but in fact it’s simply made from cane sugar. In the case of this new brand, Organic Zero, the sugar is organically grown.
Pure organic cane sugar is dissolved in water, and fermented with a USDA-approved fungus. This process is not dissimilar to making kombucha. Once the sugar solution has fermented for a while, it’s sterilized and filtered. This liquid is then heated to evaporate the water, leaving a white crystalline powder that looks like refined white cane sugar. You get about 1lb erythritol for every 2lbs of sugar used to produce it.
While organic food at its best is all about minimally-processed whole foods, I can see there’s a place for Organic Zero in some people’s lives. If you love coffee and hot tea with sugar, but need to cut back on the amount of sugar you eat, you should consider using Organic Zero on the way to cutting back your sugar usage. It doesn’t have any of the benefits of a good quality honey in terms of enzymes, but it has a zero glycemic index, which means it doesn’t cause any highs or lows in blood sugar levels. Essential news for diabetics.
Erithrytol isn’t a new ingredient, and as such doesn’t need to be treated with the suspicion new and novel untested ingredients often deserve. We’ve been eating erithrytol in mushrooms and cheeses for centuries. It has 0.2 calories per gram (which is pretty much the same as 0 calories), and actually helps prevent tooth decay as the bugs in your mouth can’t eat it.
It’s about 70% as sweet as sugar, so you’ll need to use a little more than usual to get the same effect as sugar. It also has a slightly strange cooling taste on the tongue, a bit like mint. While this is extremely subtle in coffee and tea, it makes it less desirable as a sugar replacement for baking cakes. I suggest you try baking a small batch of a familiar recipe to see if you’re happy with the results before baking a fancy cake.
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This was posted on Thursday, June 21st, 2007 at 11:25 am by Ysanne Spevack. To link here, use the permalink. You can follow any responses to this post through the 
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I wish I could get more people to sever their ties with their Diet Pepsi and margarine and other artificial intake.
If a person likes how something tastes, the tastebuds often dominate the reason switches. Weird that the tongue would over-ride the brain, eh?
Drop by our new organic health food blog sometime.
;^)
Posted by Naturally Yours on 23rd June 2007 at 4:43 am | Permalink
Holy crap!!!! NutraSweet is made by Monsanto?!?!?! I hate to say goodbye to Diet Coke but I will have to
I love Organic Zero. I emailed WS and asked for a sample. They sent about 6 or 7 packets. It really does feel like regular sugar. I’ve only used it in my coffee and oatmeal, but it does the job quite well.
It is not available locally though
Posted by goinggone99 on 30th June 2007 at 2:23 am | Permalink
If you want a natrual suagr replacement , you can’t go past Stevia. Its a rain forest plant and is not only many (apparently hundreds) of times sweeter than sugar it also has no insulin response in the body at all. In fact it is used theraputically with diatbetes sufferers because of these qualities. It is also cheap and widely available, at least in Australia, from health food stores. I did hear talk of a sugar lobby trying to get it banned in the US under the idea that as it is being used theriputically and is untested as a medicine – obviously the real reason is that it threatens their business.
Posted by Monroe on 29th July 2007 at 11:11 am | Permalink
You say “Erithrytol isn’t a new ingredient, and as such doesn’t need to be treated with the suspicion new and novel untested ingredients often deserve. We’ve been eating erithrytol in mushrooms and cheeses for centuries. It has 0.2 calories per gram (which is pretty much the same as 0 calories), and actually helps prevent tooth decay as the bugs in your mouth can’t eat it. ” and that is good news.
It seems a lot of work to go to when stevia powder has been available for thousands of years in Paraguay and other South American countries. I can buy it in Australia from the internet, and I’m sure it would be available in other countries too.
It is about ten times as sweet as sugar, and has a pleasant herbal flavor.
The cocoa in chocolate has got a reputation for chocolate being good for you, but chocolate is mostly cocoa-flavored sugar. I make a hot drink with two heaped teaspoons of cocoa powder and a quarter of a teaspoon stevia powder. Yes – I know that is unbearably sweet for most people but I like it and the drink makes me feel good, and staves off hunger for a couple of hours until meal time.
Posted by Ian McAllister on 30th July 2007 at 8:30 pm | Permalink
Here’s another Australian supporting stevia. I have grown this herb in a pot and it’s great to just chew on a leaf when you want a sweet fix.
Posted by Debbie on 11th December 2007 at 4:12 am | Permalink
Nice site!
Myself, I, more and more sympathetic to the people want to
go and take them to Please, please link
http://beautiful70.blogspot.com/
Posted by runrun ukiuki on 29th August 2008 at 1:03 pm | Permalink
Does anyone know how this stuff effects candida yeast??
Posted by NikNak on 29th October 2008 at 6:08 am | Permalink
This is great information! Anything that can be used by diabetics in place of sugar is sweet news to me!
Posted by Linda on 17th March 2009 at 1:08 pm | Permalink
Great information on Erithrytol. Very helpful. Thank you.
Posted by Kristen Elizabeth on 6th June 2009 at 4:26 am | Permalink
I love organic zero! It tastes more like sugar then stevia and I find it much easier to use. Since I don’t like overly sweet things anyway, the 70% sweetness factor is perfect for me. I find it works well in most baking too.
Yes stevia is far better then sugar for those of us with Diabetes or Insulin Resistance. However, I personally find stevia has a bitter aftertaste and have heard so from many others. One of the problems is that it is difficult to know how much to use as there are many types of formulations and different supplies use different extractions. Too much and WHAM!…that bitter after-taste!
Posted by B. Wagemann on 27th August 2009 at 2:08 pm | Permalink
I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW IF ORGANIC ZERO CONTAINS FRUCTOSE?
Posted by joan magazzolo on 14th May 2010 at 6:00 am | Permalink