[hollerith]

>It should NOT be used to influence behaviors regarding human health.

It's not like erythritol is hard for a consumer to avoid. P(serious problems like brain cell damage) does not need to get very high for it to start to make sense to avoid it, and it seems to me that studies done on cell culture can raise P high enough.

[Moto7451]

The test setup ignores the digestive system. There are going to be a lot of substances you can pour on a culture of brain cells with negative affect that your body produces or happily consumes. That’s the point of the parent.

Add milk, an alcoholic beverage, or some lemon juice and those cells are unlikely to survive. Meanwhile the standard path of consumption handles the situation just fine before your brain is ever involved in metabolism.

[OutOfHere]

To the reader, I strongly urge not listening to some rando on the internet (as opposed to the scientists) who asks you to dismiss a study, simply because the risk-reward calculus here is strongly in favor of not taking the unnecessary risk of brain damage.

[hollerith]

OK. Thanks for explaining.

[bestouff]

Alcoholic beverage, just fine ? I disagree.

[Moto7451]

How about Kombucha? Vanilla extract? Sourdough bread? Mouth wash? Oral medicines? There are more sources to alcohol than the bar, including many incidental sources we don’t think about and happily feed to children as soon as they can handle solid foods.

Like anything there’s nuance here. I’m not saying being drunk, an alcoholic, or having a single alcoholic beverage will have no negative affects. I’m discussing the difference between a culture (cells on agar) and the entirety of the human body. You are not going to reproduce the same results they had because your digestive tract, kidneys, and liver are inline.

This is really important because our food contains so many things naturally including the Erythritol in the original article.

Let’s talk about another example. Would you find Fish acceptable? How about mercury? How would you square exposure to mercury due to eating fish?

[majkinetor]

Learn about hormesis then and don't succumb to the yt's med-bros click-bait hype

[Esophagus4]

Jeez, what a dismissive (and handwaivy) response.

Alcohol is a carcinogen, and even small amounts are linked to increased cancer rates[1][2].

The only thing the WHO, CDC, and US Surgeon General have in common with the “YouTuber med bros click bait hype” you try to wholly discredit is that they probably all do have YouTube channels…

[1]https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/oash-alcohol-cancer-...

[2]https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-...

[majkinetor]

Jeez, learn to read and learn and stop with this BS already:

From your first article:

> The amount of alcohol a person drinks affects their risk of cancer. An important factor is the overall amount of alcohol consumed consistently over time.

That, sure as hell, means that you can drink small amounts sometimes, not 0, as there is no such thing. Again, read about hormesis. Here it is for you:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis#Alcohol

[pull_my_finger]

It actually is. If you're shopping low carb/keto marketed stuff, they put it in almost everything. Even other sweeteners like stevia, monkfruit, allulose often are cut with majority erythritol. You have to really scour the packaging to make sure you're buying "stevia" and not a "stevia blend" etc. Erythritol sucks too. It gives a weird cooling sensation on your tongue like menthol, I have no idea why they mix it into everything.

[asyx]

Because it has no calories. Xylitol is nicer but gets metabolized. Erythritol is one of the few sweeteners that are reasonable to use at home (like, you can dose it like sugar unlike aspartame), tastes reasonable on its own (you don’t need the blend you have in coke zero for example) and will not spike glucose levels so diabetics can actually use it.

Like, I can bake a cheese cake just like any other cheese cake as long as I replace the flour for the bottom with almond flour and the sugar with erythritol.

[pull_my_finger]

We do a lot of keto cooking here. Erythritol is the bottom of the barrel. They have monkfruit/allulose blends that are very comparable to sugar in taste and how they interact with heat - caramelization or melting in granular or powdered. I've read erythritol is more "immediately" sweet on your tongue, but for it's "potential" health detriment, as well as the overpowering "cooling" effect it's really not worth it. I guess if you're doing low cal as well you need to make additional concessions but most of those that don't get processed, really turn your GI upside down as well.

[nerdsniper]

> It's not like erythritol is hard for a consumer to avoid.

How many ingredients with negative effects on the order of erythritol are in my foods, cosmetic products, homecare products, food packaging, etc that I need to be aware of? Not how hard is it to avoid erythritol -- but how hard is it to avoid every substance that is at least similarly bad for me?

[OutOfHere]

Well, you're always welcome to be reckless and kill yourself faster if that's your goal. Just don't expect others to be equally reckless.

To answer your question, no, it is not hard to avoid the labeled harmful substances that one knows are harmful.

[IAmBroom]

Friends who have (genuine, medically diagnosed) health problems with gluten or soy would disagree.