L-arabinose is a thing and it's natural. Only really available in Japan though. Might give you some gas because some bacteria can break it down, but probably not as bad as xylitol, erythritol, etc.
Kinda weird to be downvoted for the above. GP said L-arabinose's available in Japan only. I responded to that. Could one of the downvoters please at least let me know what about my comment was so bad?
For reference, here's one place that sells it in the uk [0]. It's made in the UK as well.
Directions are:
Take 2g of Powder approximately 30 minutes before main meals.
Which matches the second part of my post (pre-meal supplement).
I am not your downvoter, but after upvoting on my phone a few times I started to realize it wasn't really clear whether my fat finger hit the up arrow or the down arrow; there is not clear feedback[1]. Since then, I've found myself concerned I might have downvoted a post I really liked, so I unvote, zoom in, and revote. Even then sometimes I've remained unclear/nervous and had to zoom yet again. I'm not sure others are aware of this UI issue or make the effort in this regard.
This is a non-issue on my laptop where the cursor is quite visible and precise.
[1] Writing this post encouraged me to experiment. I guess if you vote up, you get an option to "unvote" but if you accidentally downvote, the option is to "undown". So there is more visible feedback about your vote than I was aware of.
I will probably look for that going forward to ensure my voting intention was properly registered. But it's not super-obvious.
After you vote you have a new option. If you upvoted the option says "unvote". If you downvoted it says "undown". Just check the text after you vote to make sure you didn't fat finger it.
It's pretty awesome in terms of taste - it's just a bit less sweet but tastes just like sugar. I didn't find too much info on impact but it seems pretty safe. And you can really use it as a sugar, it even caramelizes. I use it to make home made sugar free ice cream with real sugary consistency. But for me personally, having too much of it makes my stomach rebel.
The GI effect should be just directly correlated with how well large intestine microbiome can ferment these, IIUC? And I guess also with how much you need to have equivalent taste of 1 g sugar.
As in, if it tastes sweet but is not absorbed in the small intestine, so has "no calories", it will inevitably all pass on to the large intestine where it can be fermented.
As someone who absolutely hates the synthetic taste of aspartame etc. but has to stay on a low-FODMAP diet, I've just resigned to eating stuff with ordinary sugar and using sufficient moderation.
According to the big W, part of it is due to inhibiting digestion of normal sugar, which tracks my understanding of chemistry. So there's a lot of factors.
I also love Allulose for ice cream. It costs around $25 for 2lbs bag from Amazon, that lasts us 2-3 months. It doesn't have that "fake sugar" taste, or the weirdness you get with some of the alcohol sugars (my wife once made cookies that were "cold" when you ate them because of the sugar alcohol, it was a really weird sensation.
We got a Ninja Creami, it's not a traditional ice cream maker, you freeze these pint cups, then run them through the machine and it shaves it then blends it. My preferred recipe is: a quarter cup 0% yogurt, 2-4tbs allulose, pinch of xantham gum, the remainder fruit (strawberry, blueberry, canned low sugar pears or mandarin oranges or pineapple or peaches). This is delicious, low calorie (140-240cal per pint), and low sugar. It hits all the "ice cream" centers in my brain.
My wife takes it much fancier, she will make a vanilla base, and then often make low sugar mix ins (fudge, choc chips, caramel (with allulose), peanut butter cups (with PB2), marshmallows).
The Creami is noisy as hell for 3 minutes, and I wasn't sure how much we'd actually use it, but we've used it a lot. We got it on sale, about half price, which made it easier. Woot sometimes has them about this price (more like $100 than $200). One down side is that you basically have to re-blend it every time you want some, the remains largely freeze back into solid, though if you hit it with the microwave for 20 seconds you can kind of chunk it up and eat the flakes. Not really ice cream at that point.
Any good sources you know of? Unless we are talking crazy expensive I feel like it could be pretty useful for a lot of home recipes. I don't make that much sugary stuff anyway. Does it caramelize like normal sugar when heated?
Another alternative is duox-matok's technology, that increases the surface area of sugar or something similar, and this allows to use 30%-50% less sugar for the same sweetness effect.
