Sugar Free Products Safe For Blood Sugar?
Food products labeled sugar-free should indeed no effect on blood sugar levels. But there are times when products that use artificial sweeteners actually increase blood sugar levels.
The majority of artificial sweeteners, like saccharin, aspartame and cyclamate, has a level of sweetness as sugar but without giving any extra calories.
This artificial sweetener also does not contain carbohydrates and therefore has no effect on blood sugar. But that caution must be taken is to install some products labeled sugar free, but they use sugar alcohols instead of sugar.
Sugar alcohols or sorbitol was obtained from the reduction of glucose, an aldehyde group into clusters change hydroxyl, so-called sugar alcohols. Sorbitol is widely used in a variety of products “free sugars” such as chewing gum, pastries, chocolates, and mouthwash products. For those who are keeping their blood sugar levels, products with sugar free appendage that could cause misunderstanding. Because, although sugar alcohols contain fewer calories, which is 1.5 to 3 calories per gram, while sugar contains 4 calories per gram, but the number of calories that can improve blood sugar levels.
Experts say, sugar alcohols can be categorized as carbohydrates because almost all sugar alcohol the body will be digested. One way to identify types of artificial sweeteners in a product is to read the product label. If the labels have content that ends in “-ol”, such as sorbitol, Maltitol and xylitol, means that products use sugar alcohols.