On September 8, Zhihu apologized for eating a bad stomach for "Zhihu Mooncake": due to lack of procurement experience, the mooncake will be recalled. Zhihu said that its original intention was to buy healthier low-sugar mooncakes from the products provided by suppliers, ignoring the maltitol used to replace sucrose, which may cause some people to become intolerant.
△ Zhihu apologized through official channels
In the past two years, low-sugar mooncakes and sugar-free mooncakes have begun to become popular in the market. So, does using various sugar alcohols instead of sucrose mooncakes really cause diarrhea?
Eating sugar substitutes such as maltitol can cause diarrhea
Large intakes of non-milk exogenous sugars can have adverse effects on dental health and make obese people vulnerable to adverse metabolic effects. In order to meet the WHO recommendation of "no more than 50 grams per day" free sugar intake, many foods and beverages will use sweeteners to replace sucrose, which are generally referred to as "sugar substitutes". Sugar substitutes are not fermented by oral bacteria and can reduce the incidence of caries.
Some sugar substitutes, such as xylitol, are similar in sweetness to sucrose, but the energy is only about 2/3 of sucrose, known as nutritional sweeteners; some synthetic sweeteners, such as aspartame, cyclamate, saccharin, etc., contain very low energy, but the sweetness is extremely high, known as non-nutritive sweeteners.
A notable side effect of using sugar alcohols as an alternative sweetener is an increase in gastrointestinal symptoms. Studies have shown that consuming enough large amounts of sugar can lead to pronounced diarrhea, as well as mild abdominal symptoms such as bloating and flatulence.
Maltitol is a sugar alcohol produced by hydrogenation from a starch hydrolysate with a high content of natural disaccharide maltose. After oral administration, maltitol is slowly hydrolyzed by enzymes in the small intestine into glucose and sorbitol. Therefore, the metabolism of maltitol is similar to the metabolism of sorbitol. Glucose is easily absorbed and used as energy, while the sorbitol fraction can only be absorbed slowly and incompletely.
Studies have shown that the metabolic pathways of indigestible sugar substitutes in the human gastrointestinal tract are: they evade digestion and absorption in the small intestine and provide energy to the host through the fermentation of microorganisms in the large intestine. The mechanism of diarrhea induction is thought to be similar to the mechanism associated with lactose intolerance.
The paper "Inhibitory Effect of Partially Hydrolyzed Guar Gum on Temporary Diarrhea Caused by Maltitol and Lactitol Ingestion in Healthy People" published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition on January 24, 2007 showed that 2 out of 34 subjects caused diarrhea after ingestion of 15 g of maltitol. At ingestion of up to 45 g of maltitol (the largest dose in this study), 29 of the 34 subjects (85.3%) developed diarrhea. The findings revealed that the threshold for maltitol to cause diarrhea (the smallest dose of diarrhea that occurs after ingesting maltitol) is only 15 g, and most subjects will have diarrhea when the intake reaches 45 g.
△ Female subjects took maltitol at the smallest dose to cause temporary diarrhea
In other words, take a 100g mooncake as an example, if its sweetness comes from sugar substitutes, then eating 1-2 monthly cakes at one time is enough to cause diarrhea.
Not only maltitol, but xylitol, which was very hot in the first two years, has the same problem. Shen Juquan, deputy secretary-general of the Shanghai Food Society, deputy director of scientific research and senior engineer of the Shanghai Food Research Institute, said that after excessive intake of xylitol, there is a certain stimulation of the gastrointestinal tract, which may cause abdominal discomfort, flatulence and intestinal ringing. And because xylitol is absorbed in the intestine less than 20%, it is easy to accumulate in the intestinal wall, which is easy to cause osmotic diarrhea. With a Chinese physique, the upper limit of xylitol intake for adults a day is 50 grams, and chewing gum alone should be no problem, but if you eat a lot of other xylitol foods, you need to pay attention to the amount of food.
According to the Guangdong Provincial Consumer Commission, if there are indeed adverse reactions such as diarrhea caused by excessive consumption, merchants should sign a warning.
Sugar substitutes will also gain weight when they eat too much
Some people think that sugar substitutes are not digested, absorbed, or metabolized like sucrose, so they provide less energy per unit of mass. However, this view is controversial.
Dr. Sun Liang of the Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences, reminded that at present, there is still a lot of controversy about whether sweeteners affect health. Although sugar substitutes are less likely to cause blood sugar metabolism disorders, they still provide a certain amount of energy, and eating too much may also cause flatulence and diarrhea. Moreover, not consuming calories does not mean that it is harmless to health, after all, these synthetic sweeteners enter the human body and will participate in metabolism. In some animal experiments, artificial sweeteners have been found to induce inflammation, fatty liver, and abnormal glucose metabolism.
Dr. Rui Lili of the Department of Food and Nutrition of the Academy of Military Medical Sciences believes that "xylitol can effectively reduce fat accumulation in the body, control diabetic complications" and other propaganda is unscientific, xylitol and other sugar substitutes not only can not play a role in curing diseases, diabetics once ingested more, but also will produce side effects, resulting in elevated blood triglycerides, causing coronary atherosclerosis, may also cause abdominal discomfort, flatulence, bowel sounds, diarrhea and so on. Professor Zheng Jianxian of the School of Food and Biological Engineering of South China University of Technology said that although some sugar substitutes are not glucose substances, they will also gain weight when they eat too much.
Column Editor-in-Chief: Mao Jinwei Text Editor: Bai Lu Title Image Source: Figure Worm Image Editor: Xu Jiamin
Source: Author: Bai Lu Li Man