All sweeteners—natural and artificial; caloric and non-caloric—help maintain cravings for intensely sweet foods.
Unsweetening the Diet
Doctor's Note
The other two mechanisms by which low calorie sweeteners could, counterintuitively, lead to weight gain were explored in How Diet Soda Could Make Us Gain Weight and Neurobiology of Artificial Sweeteners. If we’re able to maintain a healthy diet at home and away, though, then there may be no dietary downside to moderate erythritol consumption; see Erythritol May Be a Sweet Antioxidant. Just remember that although most erythritol is absorbed before it reaches the large colon, a small percentage remains. So, if you eat sufficiently large amounts, you can indeed trigger the osmotic diarrhea seen more commonly with the non-absorbed sugar alcohols, such as sorbitol and xylitol.
For further context, check out my associated blog post: How to Gain Weight on Diet Soda.
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