Dr Bret left DD? Too bad... I'm out of the loop, I guess.

I like the point raised that this has to be evaluated on your personal circumstances: if you're like several MM followers/commenters and erythritol products are keeping you on the straight and narrow, helping you live a normal life for the first time in years... don't panic. More info is needed, because as this guy points out:


I'm also suspicious about the fact that there were 40 subjects in the study, and they only reported the results of 9.

Is this maybe a situation like blood cholesterol levels? ie, consuming less does not necessarily lower blood levels. You could go vegan and consume zero cholesterol, and your liver simply produces more. How/when/why do erythrotol levels become elevated? What if you consumed almost zero? Genetic/epigenetic factors?

Point for people like me who do still enjoy the odd treat: the oldest trick in the LC book is to simply combine sweeteners because they have a synergistic effect. Use a few of them, and you can use less than you would have if you only used one.

What else is sugar and stevia but highly processed additions? Look how easily they can expand to outsized proportion in our diets. How many times have we warned each other about too much dependence on Frankenfoods? One Atkins bar a day started my life-changing journey. I think it worked so well at the start, as it did for DH, because it was still better than what I'd been eating before We literally grow out of such "helpers" as we grow in our abilities to clearly assess what is working and what is not. That taught me to give up any food, as cotonpal did.

I tried to turn my diet into keto with all kinds of plants that turned out to be high in oxalate, which seems to be utterly instrumental in getting to the root of my weird autoimmune issues. (They weren't properly diagnosed for a long time and once they emerged as something they could diagnose, they had only drugs with serious side effects. This was never going to "work.")

And yet, JEY has success with a processed milk that fits her personal macros better, while I rely on whey protein when my digestion needs "invalid food." Perhaps this is why the term ultra-processed appeared, because we've been "processing food" since we got fascinated by fire

The book Unprocessed (I'm still stuck with the appalling UK statistics from the author on mental health) has greatly informed my thinking. She defines the most dangerous such foods as ones where all the nutrition has been taken out, and a few artificial vitamins added back in, buried in an onslaught of other chemicals. All lab-tested to fool us into thinking we are eating food.

When we had a gene analysis done on DH, he has a common mutation that prevents him from processing such artificial vitamins. Specialized Bs and more meat and whey protein has been instrumental in turning around his latest -- long -- crisis.

The day my brain reset itself was my first few meals that were merely hamburger and salt when I was desperate to douse my severest autoimmune flare. It was time to try carnivore. I'd promised myself I would do that before agreeing to a lifelong, immune-suppressing, highly expensive, drug regimen.

Simply not eating for three days stopped the horrible symptoms, but I already knew eating was my problem. For me, carnivore fixed the entire question of What To Eat in a low carb way I already knew worked for me.

The only part I yet had not grasped was just how much my body couldn't digest plants. When the messages to "eat your vegetables" had only been amplified for my entire life.

So it was honestly a shock to experience looking at my genetic results and realizing 99% of my genes were from geographic areas full of people who didn't farm. For a 5/6th generation Midwestern farm girl, this was incredible information that supported what my food experiments were leading to.

NOTHING has ever been, and it continues to be, as satisfying as giving my body what it wants to thrive. I'm continually convinced that there is no one diet that fits everyone, and it can't be. Because we spread over the face of the globe and learned to thrive where we were.

But it took millions of years. I don't have that kind of time. I can't, I won't, adapt my body to today's fashion in the food industry.

"Eat what nourishes YOU" is probably the best advice I could give or take.

Kristine, Dr Bret Scher joined a new non-profit, The Metabolic Mind, as Medical Director. https://metabolicmind.org/ Luckily he seems to post similar study evaluations there.

His last podcast interview for DD was a good one with Dr Ted Naiman.
https://youtu.be/DF8xvOZqKVk
Satiety: the path to Healthy Weight Loss.

Nutrition has become science by headline. They hunt down something that makes trouble in test tube or mice, and throw out scare tactics that make people so confused they won't listen to anyone.

To show how bad it's gotten, here's yesterday's article on pesticides in our diet. Should we worry?



Ironically enough, on a site named Real Clear Science. Riiiiiight. Hey, this is reassuring. I should go ahead and eat pesticides, because next year there will be "studies" showing how they are really good for me.

Then, look for Health Jolt in an grocery end cap in the next few months. That hot new pesticide smoothie clogging the aisles near YOU.

Jean - this is an extremely well-stated message. The drive for pleasurable eating is not lost when favoring health first. During the period of my life when I was eating much that turned out to be unhealthy, I couldn't trust my instincts due to an eating pattern that produced pleasure in a very distorted way. I had to redefine "pleasure" as related to my eating in the context of health. Over the years, I have not given up pleasure in eating; rather, I've re-programmed my metabolism to get pleasure out of foods that are nutrient dense and healthy for me. Fortunately, I no longer get pleasure out of sweets, so the AS issue or even the natural sweetener that may impact gut bacteria are no longer issues for me. Using improved health as a dietary objective makes all the difference.

I'm sure we'll be hearing from the erythritol industry once the news hits their bottom line. Then we'll see the pendulum swing with their studies.

The one thing that strikes me differently about this news is that they didn't get this news from people's recollections of what they ate, but from what they found in their blood and how it affects platelets.

I also understand that people don't want to hear this news. I sure didn't. I'd love to find a counter argument I can accept, but not finding one at the moment.

https://youtu.be/Atx2BGXlbb4

Nancy, have a look at this evaluation.

( I've listened to some 6 sources that I tend to mostly trust and everyone thought this study is inadequate on several levels. )

https://youtu.be/PtE5roMuNQg

Another doctor thoughtfully ripping apart this study.

The high levels of erythritol was not due to ingestion of said, but endogenous.

Found a couple of problems. The assumption that 30g of Erythritol is a lot. It isn't. It would be equivalent about 1 Tablespoon of sugar in sweetness. I could easily sprinkle a T. over strawberries on yogurt. Or have some E sweetened syrup in my smoothie each morning, and something else later on. Yeah, I do like my sweets and they help me stay low carb. But, sure, I think I could stand to cut back quite a lot.

Assuming that E. was the end product of some other function seems disingenuous because they did have some evidence that eating E. raises E. in your blood stream for about 3 days. It makes sense. Erythritol was the only (that I know of) sugar alcohol that gets absorbed out of the small intestine. That's why it isn't so gassy as other ones. So, it gets absorbed and goes into your blood stream until it gets processed.

Further, in mice studies and in vitro, it made platelets overactive thus possibly leading to larger clots.

It is early days and I'm sure we'll be hearing a lot more, but this is one I feel is risky to mess with for me personally. Everyone can make their own risk assessments. My age, my genetics, the fact that COVID can cause clot issues too, is enough to convince me that caution is warranted. For me.

Meanwhile, the right kind of stevia makes my Greek yogurt taste ok and is fine with my morning smoothie. I can live with that.

There are already tons of low carb youtube people trying to find fault with it. I can understand why. They've spent a lot of time making videos about recipes using E.

Layne Norton, biochemist and PhD in Nutritional Science, who does not have social media accounts with keto desserts:

Layne Norton also points out that metabolically broken people have high levels of erythritol in their system. priority should be getting healthy, which may include dialing back super sweet stuff in favour of real food. https://twitter.com/BioLayne/status/1631043559209021446

Guessing that many on this forum are/were metabolically broken. First, delete the obviously super sweet "keto recipes". Hedonic, high fat + high carb (count total carbs in Erythritol). If you use these recipes, it reduces the Nutrients needed to provide higher satiety.

I think almost everyone goes back and forth on this issue, because there shouldn't be any further discussion about the addictive nature of junk foods. They spend billions of dollars perfecting their drug and the delivery system.

They are turning all of our food into an addictive substance: that's the end goal. When the deadly writing was on the wall, what did the tobacco companies do? They bought into snack food companies, like Reynolds buying Nabisco. They don't care what the substance is as long as customers must have it.

This leads to Big Food continually oversweetening everything, just as they added nicotine to tobacco.

Our tastebuds have been skewed through a lifetime of this manipulation. Cut back gradually, and we sharpen our sense of taste.

Not only Big Food over-sweetening, many of the "keto" recipe creators use an ungodly amount of artificial sweetener. When I read a post about someone Loving a keto recipe, it’s always the type of hedonic food like brownies loaded with sweetener.

Prevention Magazine weighs in, interviewing a number of cardiologists:

https://www.prevention.com/health/a...k-stroke-study/

They also added SUGAR to tobacco, and still do so.

More reasons to eat whole food, not packaged. Avoids additives like sugar, like extra AS, and so many more . And dont smoke!

Dr Berg, CO, delves into the problems with the study. Several critiques have pointed out this was not about adding erythritol to the diet as a testing method.
https://youtu.be/0oPkpa3ovSo

He also points out that PERHAPS obese subjects with heart and coronary issues have high levels erythritol due to poor health, as the body makes this.

Not a cause and effect study.

When they test newborns for PKU, it's because a therapeutic diet must be started right away. They can't process phenylamine/Aspartame, so it builds up in their bodies and wreaks terrible havoc. Once they are adults, it is a matter of avoiding that substance.

Which is in EVERYTHING processed even if they don't tell you, I hear.

Which is why I got DH off the Aspartame sodas quite soon after we started dating. I don't feel comfortable with a certain level of brain toxin, and I don't see why I should relax that rule.

They might have seen a fleeting response for all we know. And people differ widely in their tolerance and detoxing of such substances, even if occurs naturally, as I'm learning about oxalates.

Everything is confusing, and gotten worse. My latest trip through Pub Med is staggering me. They will admit, somewhere, that they have no evidence to continue telling everyone how to eat in the way they want them to... but that never gets to the conclusion that there is NO support to think that works for everyone.

That gets danced around around until the reader is dizzy.