John Myers
There are several ways to sweeten desserts, cakes, and muffins while cutting calories. One of them is the use of erythritol. Read here what the low-calorie sugar substitute erythritol consists of, how you use the sweetener, and what you should pay attention to.
Erythritol & Calories: less than sugar
Feasting without a guilty conscience – a dream for many. After all, sweets such as cakes, chocolate or fruit gums have a high sugar content, which makes the treats problematic for diabetics, the overweight, and the health-conscious. Sugar substitutes such as xylitol, aspartame, and stevia should help. With 20 kcal per 100 g, erythritol has a very low-calorie content, which is twenty times lower than that of sugar. Since the consistency of the sweetener is similar to sugar, it can be used well for baking without sugar. Only the sweetening power is lower, which is why you should usually use a little more when baking with erythritol. To do this, you can process a special variant. Because erythritol can be used to make powdered sugar – and you can find the sweetener in even more different forms. For example, there is also erythritol chocolate.
What is erythritol?
If you use erythritol as a sugar substitute, you are using sugar alcohol that is found naturally in ripe fruit, cheese, pistachios, and wine. Erythritol, sold under trade names such as Sukrin or labeled E 968, is obtained from carbohydrates through an industrial fermentation process. Corn is often used as the starting material. If you want to be sure that no genetically modified maize is used, you can use organic erythritol.
In terms of taste, erythritol can hardly be distinguished from sugar. When baking with stevia as a substitute, on the other hand, the intense taste of the sweetener can be unpleasant. Stevia also has much less bulk and binding power than sugar. In contrast to erythritol, it is therefore not suitable as a 1:1 substitute.
Erythritol: healthy or not?
According to current knowledge, erythritol is harmless to health. When consuming large amounts of the sugar substitute, digestive problems in the form of flatulence and diarrhea can occur as side effects. You are generally on the safe side if you do not exceed the recommended daily maximum of 2 g per kg of body weight. A person weighing 70 kg should therefore easily tolerate 140 g daily. People with a sensitive digestive system can first approach this maximum amount and gradually use a little more erythritol as a sugar substitute.
Our tip: Find out more about the sugar substitute xylitol.
