Erythritol (low calorie natural sugar substitute)

I first found out about erythritol when I bought Honest Tea's Tangerine Green Tea, which has only 10 calories but is all natural. How? It uses a little-known, natural low-calorie sweetener called erythritol. Erythritol has only 5% of the calories of sugar, but 70% of the sweetness.

It's a sugar alcohol, but with a few key benefits over both sugar and other high-calorie natural sweeteners, and sorbitol, maltitol and others used in low-carb products today.

• It's 100% natural, occurring naturally in fruits like canteloupe and grapes. Also, it's a natural by-product of fermentation by bacteria in your digestive tract.
• It's safe. The U.S. FDA lists it as a GRAS (generally recognized as safe) substance, the highest-safety designation, like foodstuffs.
• It is not hygroscopic, which means it doesn't attract moisture and start to clump and harden, like fructose or brown sugar do.

• It has a large, negative heat of dissolution, which means that it cools hot liquids much more than sugar when you dissolve it (see picture to right), and it is very difficult to dissolve it in cold liquids like iced tea.
• It is only 70% as sweet as table sugar (sucrose), so you will have to use more of it to make something as sweet as sugar.
• It will not melt or caramelize, so it will not brown or melt if you want to make candy or caramel.
• When a liquid with erythritol dries on a glass, it creates fine, white crystals, which makes your glass look really dirty.

To me, these are not big negatives, but they are worth mentioning. For iced tea, it's worth dissolving the erythritol in hot water first, and then adding that to the iced tea, like a simple syrup.