Laxative threshold of sugar alcohol erythritol in human subjects

The dose-response relation between a low energy bulking sweetener, erythritol, and the induction of diarrhea symptoms was investigated in healthy human subjects, 14 male office workers and 24 female students. The subjects ingested 1.0 to 3.5 cups of jelly containing 25 g of erythritol once in a day about 2 h after a meal. The jelly intake was stopped at the dosage level that test substance caused diarrhea or at the maximum dose level in the study. A record of gastrointestinal symptoms and physical conditions were kept by all subjects before and after each ingestion of the test substance. Sorbitol and sucrose were used in order to provide a comparison with erythritol. The laxative threshold of erythritol was estimated as 0.80 g/kg body weight for females and 0.66 g/kg body weight for males, respectively. Those of sorbitol were 0.24 g/kg body weight for females and 0.17 g/kg body weight for males. But, no subjects experienced diarrhea in the dosage of more than 1.2 g of sucrose per kg of body weight. These results suggest that erythritol would be quite acceptable to administer up to 1 g per kg of body weight in daily use because the permissible dose level certainly increases with ingestion 2 or 3 times in a day and with the adaptation that occurs after repeated ingestion.