Sweet on Erythritol? Sugar Substitute Linked to Heart Disease

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

The other day, my 7-year-old asked me why all the good-tasting foods are junky and all the healthy foods are yucky. And that's the rub, isn't it? We have evolved to enjoy high-calorie–, high-salt–, high-sugar–containing foods because we evolved in a time of scarcity. And, for the developed world at least, that time is past.

In this time of plenty, where delicious-tasting, if unhealthy, foods are ubiquitous, is it any wonder that so much time has been spent trying to find substances that taste good without all the baggage that comes with, say, sugar?

Enter sugar substitutes, a $10 billion–dollar industry. The field is varied and includes small molecules and polypeptides, artificial sweeteners, and so-called "natural" sugar alternatives, all brought together by the simple fact that they bind to the sweetness receptors on taste buds.

And it is one of those sweeteners — erythritol — that we are going to talk about today in an ongoing series that we should really call "Is This Thing That You Eat Everyday Secretly Killing You?"

Erythritol is a sugar alcohol found in nature, meaning that manufacturers do not need to label it as an artificial sweetener.