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Xylitol is a pleasant tasting bulk sweetener, which is suitable for a variety of reduced calorie and sugar free foods.Xylitol has been part of the human diet for thousands of years due to its presence in fruits such as pears, melons and grapes as well as other foods such as mushrooms wine cheese and soy sauce. For many years, xylitoll has been commercially produced and added to foods and beverages to provide sweetness as well as enhancing their taste and texture. It is a white crystalline powder that is odorless, with a clean sweet taste that is similar to sucrose. It is approximately 70% as sweet as sucrose and flows easily due to its non-hygroscopic character.
Use it as you would sugar, honey, agave, maple syrup or any high glycemic sweetener.
Elaina says: "The difference is this:
You won't be spiking your blood sugar and INSULIN. Dr. Gabriel Cousen's M.D. from The Tree of Life speaks about Insulin being the death and aging hormone. When our blood sugar level is spiked above 100, our insulin increases and we create a viscious cycle of energy ups and downs as our insulin dips. When this happens, other hormones begin to become more active. Our insulin levels are closely tied to aging and death, and ultimately our overall health and well being. It is in my mission to help you keep your blood sugar low by offering you products that taste sweet but won't raise your insulin levels.
At Elaina Love's Vitality Culinary Academy you will learn sugar free desserts and ways to take all blood sugar raising sweeteners out and use xylitol and Lakanto instead. Check out our upcoming programs"
Xylitol ...
nature's sweet deliverance from sugar
Xylitol is a natural substance derived from the xylan of birch and other hardwood trees, berries, almond hulls and corn cobs. It was discovered in 1891 by German chemist, Emil Fischer, and has been used as a sweetening agent since the 1960's. Xylitol is a substance that occurs naturally in many fruits and vegetables, and in fact, is produced in small amounts (5-15 grams per day) in the human body during normal metabolism. Xylitol enjoys wide acceptance in Japan, Finland, and the Scandinavian countries. In the Soviet Union it has been used for decades as a sweetener for diabetics, and in Germany in solutions for intravenous feeding. Numerous clinical and field studies performed over the past 30 years have demonstrated the safety and efficacy of xylitol as a healthy alternative to sugar and artificial sweeteners.
Xylitol Production
Xylitol is a natural substance appearing in many forest and agricultural materials containing hemicellulose.
These materials rich in hemicellulose have been used as a raw material in xylitol manufacturing. Hemicellulose is chemically a xylan, a long polysaccharide molecule consisting of D-xylose units. Xylans (which in turn are examples of so-called pentosans) are typically present in certain hardwoods (such as birch and beech), rice, oat, wheat and cotton seed hulls, various nut shells, straw, corn cobs and stalks, sugar cane bagasse, etc.
According to this terminology, pentosans are polysaccharides consisting of five-carbon pentose sugars, such as D-xylose. (Glucans consist of six-carbon D-glucose units, and represent spesific hexosans, important in the growth of dental plaque.) In the manufacturing process of xylitol (2), the xylan molecules are first hydrolyzed into D-xylose. The latter is chemically reduced to xylitol which can be separated by large-scale column chromatography. Xylitol is finally crystallized. The entire process is complicated and demands great engineering skills and experience.
The amounts of xylitol present freely in plants are too low for industrial exploitation. Xylitol can, of course, be synthesized by means of organic chemical procedures, but the usage of D-xylose as a starting material is currently more feasible. Xylitol can also be made by means of bacterial fermentations which utilize D-xylose, D-glucose, or other suitable raw materials as substrates. These processes have not been economically feasible.
The chemical profile of xylitol; terminology
Xylitol is a natural sugar alcohol of the pentitol type, i.e. the xylitol molecule contains five carbon atoms and five hydroxyl groups (Fig. 1). Therefore, xylitol can be called a pentitol. Xylitol belongs to the polyalcohols (polyols) which are not, strictly speaking, "sugars" which traditionally include certain nutritive carbohydrate sweeteners (sucrose, corn sugar, corn syrup, invert sugar, D-fructose, D-glucose, etc.; in some reports the term "sugars" is collectively used to refer to mono- and disaccharides). However, the legitimacy for including polyols in the sugar field results from biochemical relationships; polyols are formed from, and can be converted to, sugars (i.e. aldoses and ketoses). Some chemical encyclopedias define sugars as crystalline, sweet carbohydrates. The sugar alcohols thus fall in this category.
To fully understand the dental effects of xylitol, it is important to refer to the structural differences between various dietary polyols (3). Sorbitol is another sugar alcohol, a hexitol type of polyol, owing to its 6-carbon structure. Because of this, sorbitol can support the growth of cariogenic mutans streptococci and other oral bacteria which are not normally able to utilize xylitol for growth. Because of evolutionary expediency, cariogenic organisms prefer 6-carbon ("hexose-based") structures, such as D-glocose, as an energy source. Therefore, it is important to akcnowledge the inevitable biochemical differences between xylitol (a pentitol and pentose-derived) and sorbitol (a hexitol and hexose-derived), and to understand the nomenclature-related definitions described above.
In spite of the existence of some differences between the various sugar alcohols, xylitol and most other polyols also display dentally interesting common properties: they can form certain type of complexes with calcium and certain other polyvalent cations. Such Ca-xylitol complexes can be present, for example, in the oral cavity and in the intestines. In the former, such complexes may contribute to the remineralization of demineralized enamel and dentine caries lesions observed in subjects who habitually consume xylitol.
In the intestines, those complexes can facilitate the absorption of calcium through the gut wall; this effect has been suggested to play a role in the xylitol-associated prevention of osteoporosis in experimental animals (4). From the dental point of view, the role of xylitol (and certain other polyols) as stabilizers of the salivary calcium and phosphate ions may be important. It is possible that xylitol stabilizes the calcium phosphate system present in saliva in the same manner some salivary peptides (such as statherin) do (5).
Professor Kauko K. Mäkinen, Institute of Dentistry, University of Turku, Finland
References 1. Mäkinen KK. Biochemical principles of the use of xylitol in medicine and nutrition with special consideration of dental aspects. Birkhäuser Verlag, Basel, 1978.
2. Aminoff C. New carbohydrate sweeteners. In "Sugars in Nutrition" (Sipple HL, McNutt KW, eds), Chapter 10, Academic Press, New York 1974.
3. Mäkinen KK. Latest dental studies on xylitol and mechanism of action of xylitol in caries limitation. In "Progress in Sweeteners" (Grenby TH, ed.), Chapter 13, Elsevier, London 1989.
4. Svanberg M, Knuuttila M. Dietary xylitol prevents ovariectomy-induced changes of bone inorganic fraction in rats. Bone Miner (1994) 26:81-88.
5. Mäkinen KK, Söderling E. Solubility of calcium salts, enamel, and hydroxyapatite in aqueous solutions of simple carbohydrates. Calcif Tissue Int (1984) 36:64-71.
6. Mäkinen KK. Dietary prevention of dental caries by xylitol - clinical effectiveness and safety. J Appl Nutr (1992) 44:16-28.
7. Uhari M, Kontiokari T, Koskela M, Niemelä M. Xylitol chewing gum in prevention of acute otitis media: double blind randomised trial. Br Med J (1996) 313:1180-1184.
The author is a Professor in the Institute of Dentistry,
University of Turku, Finland.