The new study on erythritol has caused a veritable panic on social media. In this video, Gil clears up a lot of the misinformation and exaggerated claims being made.
It’s unfortunate that news articles misrepresent studies (intentionally or unintentionally) and create a lot of unnecessary fear about the food we’re eating. It’s made even worse by people with social media followings blindly repeating these articles without reading the actual scientific paper or having the expertise to interpret them correctly.
I think these kind of sensationalised articles also contribute to a lack of understanding and trust in science. It’s not unlikely that there’ll soon be another study that shows a benefit of erythritol (Gil even mentions a couple in his video), and news articles will be reporting on how great it is. This gives the impression that science ‘can’t make up it’s mind’ and is constantly swinging back and forth between what foods are healthy and unhealthy, which is simply not the case.
Anyway, I’m mostly just writing this because I’m not allowed to only post a link to the video. Nonetheless, I think this is an important issue to talk about.
Layne Norton has also made a video about it here.
This is excellent and puts it all into perspective. Erythritol may be a marker in some people and no causal effect was shown. The study was done before erythritol was being used in foods and no dietary erythritol was given