Erythritol

Erythritol is a four-carbon sugar alcohol, or polyol, used as a bulk sweetener and coded E 968 in the EU. It is about 70 percent as sweet as table sugar and carries essentially no usable energy. EU labelling rules assign it 0 kcal per gram, while other polyols count as 2.4 kcal per gram. Roughly 90 percent is absorbed in the small intestine and excreted unchanged in urine. Erythritol is also made inside the body, from glucose via the pentose phosphate pathway. EFSA re-evaluated erythritol in 2023 and set a numerical ADI of 0.5 g per kilogram of body weight per day, based on the highest single dose that did not cause diarrhoea in human studies. JECFA had previously left the ADI 'not specified'. Witkowski and colleagues reported in Nature Medicine in 2023 that higher fasting erythritol tracked three-year cardiovascular events across three patient cohorts, and that erythritol raised platelet reactivity in vitro and thrombosis in animals. Endogenous production complicates that reading. Hootman and colleagues showed in 2017 that blood erythritol rises with impaired glucose handling and adiposity gain. A high level may therefore mark metabolic state rather than intake, which is the reverse-causation critique. This defence does not transfer to xylitol.

Last reviewed: August 25, 2026

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