Any of the sugar alcohols, also called fruit alcohols (any sweetener ending in -ol) can have this affect. So can actual fruit for that matter (though it usually requires an awful lot of fruit, and the effect isn't just due to the fruit alcohol, but also the water and fiber).
I find that I don't have issues if I stick to one serving (per the nutrition label, not per "looks like an appropriate serving to me), but I still usually avoid the products just because the servings are so ridiculously small. I bought a pack of sugar free jelly belly jelly beans in the cafeteria gift shop when I was working, and the package wasn't even a full 2" square (and it wasn't filled to capacity either. Maybe 15 to 20 jelly beans tops). I even read the nutrition label, but I misread it. I thought the information was for the whole bag (it was such a tiny bag, it didn't really compute to me that there could be more than 2 servings in the bag).
When I started having uh, potty issues I immediately suspected the sugar alcohols in the jelly bellies and dug the bag out of my trash. Sure enough, the packaged supposedly contained something like 5 servings of like 3 or 4 jelly beans. Now who eats 4 jelly beans?
If I were a person who found 4 jelly beans satisfying, I wouldn't need them to be sugar free (I mean even as a diabetic, 4 small sugar jelly beans aren't going to have a huge impact on my blood sugar, and even the calorie difference is minimal).
Last edited by kaplods; 03-04-2011 at 03:55 PM.
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