Healthcare Professionals

How Truvia™natural sweetener fits into your diet when you are counting carbs.

Truvia™  natural sweetener is an idea whose time has finally come. It is the first natural, great tasting, zero calorie sweetener. And yes, it is IDEAL for the carbohydrate conscious consumer. One of the most frequently asked questions by carb conscious consumers is whether they should count the 3 grams of carbohydrate on the label. The answer is NO. Here’s why…

The carbohydrate in Truvia™ natural sweetener comes from erythritol – a natural sugar alcohol that is also found in grapes and pears – that also has zero calories. Erythritol passes through the body without being broken down for calories. As a result, it has no effect on blood sugar. Erythritol is used in Truvia™ natural sweetener to evenly disperse rebiana to achieve uniform sweetness, similar to how dextrose and other suitable ingredients are used by other high intensity sweeteners to evenly disperse the sweetener.

Erythritol is a natural sugar alcohol that is different from other sugar alcohols in two ways.

1. Erythritol is not broken down by the body, so it cannot provide calories or affect blood sugar. Other sugar alcohols can be broken down by the body to varying degrees. This means that the body can use them for calories. Erythritol is different, it provides zero calories.
2. Erythritol has excellent gastrointestinal tolerance. This is because most of the erythritol that is consumed (up to 90%) is absorbed from the small intestine. Once it is absorbed, it is no longer available to cause problems in the gut.

At TRUVIA.com our recipes include total calories, grams carbohydrate, grams erythritol, grams fiber, grams sugar. This practice allows you to subtract the grams of erythritol from the grams of total carbohydrate when you are count­ing your grams of carbohydrate.

The recipe lists 22 grams of carbohydrate and 8 grams of erythritol. This means that there are 14 grams of nutritive carbohydrates per serving. You may notice that the 14 grams of nutritive carbohydrates are coming from sugar (10 g/serving) and fiber (4 g/serving). Thus, per serving, the triple berry soymilk smoothie provides the body with 14 grams of carbohydrate.