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What Is Erythritol?

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What Is Erythritol? 

By John Schloss, PhD, Chair of Pharmaceutical Science, Associate Dean of Research, Professor

 At a recent gathering of the School of Pharmacy the question was asked, “What is erythritol?”  The simple answer is that erythritol is a polyol (four-carbon), or a reduced simple sugar, like sorbitol (six-carbon reduction product of glucose or fructose), glycerol (three-carbon) or xylitol (five-carbon).  However, dietary erythritol,1 unlike sorbitol, glycerol, or xylitol, does not get converted by metabolism into glucose, the essential sugar required for brain function.  This means that erythritol has a glycemic index of 0—i.e., none of the erythritol consumed gets turned into glucose—although a small fraction of erythritol (about 10%) gets oxidized to erythrose (an aldose like glucose) and then further oxidized to erythronate (a sugar acid).  Most of the erythritol is excreted unchanged in the urine (90%).  From the standpoint of weight control and diabetes, this sounds ideal, right?  Wrong.  The biggest problem with erythritol is the effect it has on platelets.  Erythritol potentiates platelet aggregation and may increase the risk of strokes and cardiovascular events.2   Besides its use as a single-component sweetener, erythritol is combined with other sweeteners like stevia, monk fruit, and sucralose in a wide variety of commercial products.  Erythritol also occurs naturally in many foods, such as grapes, pears, watermelon, and mushrooms, along with other polyols, simple and complex sugars, sugar acids, and conjugated sugars.  Interestingly, erythritol is present at higher levels in obese individuals, raising the question whether it may contribute to some of the pathologies associated with obesity.3   

  1.  Mazi TA, Stanhope KL (2023) Erythritol: An in-depth discussion of its potential to be a beneficial dietary component. Nutrients 15(1):204.  
  2. Witkowski M, Wilcox J, Province V, Wang Z, Nemet I, Tang WHW, Hazen SL (2024) Ingestion of the non-nutritive sweetener erythritol, but not glucose, enhances platelet reactivity and thrombosis potential in healthy volunteers-brief report. Arterioscler Thromb Vasc Biol 44(9):2136-2141.   
  3. Hootman KC, Trezzi J-P, Kraemer L, Burwell LS, Dong X, Guertin KA, Jaeger C, Stover PJ, Hiller K, Cassano PA (2017) Erythritol is a pentose-phosphate pathway metabolite and associated with adiposity gain in young adults. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 114(21):E4233–E4240.