this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2025
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Interesting thing about most sugar substitutes is they actually kill mouth & gut microbiome.
That seems like an impressively blanket statement when there's literally dozens of sugar substitutes that are all wildly chemically different. Insane that all of them would kill your mouth and gut microbiome even when they often work in fundamentally different ways.
Any evidence for this in Stevia or Monk Fruit?
here's a pretty good meta-analysis I found of various studies of stevia affecting bacteria in vitro and in vivo
the conclusion this paper comes to seems to be "depends on the species and strain of bacteria"
so just like pretty much anything you eat then.
yes, but I think it warrants further study. some GI issues are related to one or just a few bacterial strains being unbalanced, so it could be extremely useful in treating gut microbiome imbalances to know which strains are negatively impacted by specific sweeteners
conversely if we found any specific sweetener to have a bacteriostatic or bactericidal effect on a strain that is pathological when overly populated (e.g. H. pylori), that could be a super easy way for some people to prevent chronic flare-ups
I also don't have any studies, but I am aware of xylitol being used in toothpaste, chewing gum, etc., usually with the "assists in the prevention of tooth decay" type of tagline.
Xylitol is different from erythritol, but both are "sugar alcohols" so further study would be needed
xylitol does have beneficial affects against bacteria
I believe that is just because chewing gum increases salivation which helps keep bacteria in check
ethrythiol is often mixed with these two, but there are product with solely stevia in it if your interested.
Erithrol is the sweetener derived from monkfruit.
Comes from corn usually
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erythritol
I did a couple searches and I didn't see that mentioned. In my searches I read that monk fruit so like 250x sweeter than sugar, so erythritol is used as a "bulking agent" for monk fruit. So I guess they use it to dilute monk fruit and make it more manageable? Idk, I've been consuming both for quite a while and this is news to me, going to have to learn more about both.
That makes sense.
No. I don't have any studies on hand, but the data that I'm aware of says that stevia is one of the small few that actually helps your gut biome. However, too high of a quantity can lead to other issues (I think related to the heart).
Stevia is often blended with it but only lists in the ingredients.
it's also often blended with dextrose which is SUPER annoying if you're trying to do specialized baking or diets
I've checked store brands
https://www.fooducate.com/product/Food-Lion-Stevia-Extract-Sweetener/58988B77-93DA-593B-4AF9-85AAB6F98848
www.fooducate.com/product/Sweet-Additions-Stevia/7D892B72-6914-11E1-AFF9-1231380C18FB
https://tools.myfooddata.com/nutrition-facts/373190/wt1
https://www.fooducate.com/product/Kroger-Stevia-Blend/B5C6A580-5826-11E2-A40C-1231381A0463
ETA: in the raw lists dextrose
I don't know about baking, but avoiding random other stuff blended in is why I get my stevia as a liquid -- the one I use only has water, stevia extract, and a couple of preservatives.
It's probably a lot more manageable as a liquid. I had powdered pure stevia and it would get EVERYWHERE and contaminate random things with horrible levels of sweetness. I think I'll get a liquid next time I need it (e.g. for rounding out allulose to make up for its 70% sweetness compared to sucrose)
its either dextrose, or maltodextrin, which are basically sugar with extra steps.
I thought xylitol was good for gut biome
We have mouth/gut biome that eats sugar? Seems weird.