Sorbit: The Sweet Substance That Is Not Sugar

1. What Is It Actually?

Sorbitol is a sugar alcohol. Sugar alcohols are also called polyols. The word sounds like chemistry lessons, but it means something quite simple: they are substances that taste sweet, but are built differently from the sugar you know from the kitchen.

It says on the packet that there is no sugar in it. Both can be true, because the sweetness then comes from a sugar alcohol like sorbitol.

Sorbitol is not only in chewing gum. It is also found in toothpaste, in some drinks and in nasal sprays. Researchers have, for example, studied sugar-free chewing gums that contain sugar alcohols like sorbitol, and looked at what happens to the gums. Others have tested whether sorbitol can reduce a bitter taste in the mouth.

You can think of sorbitol as a building block that looks a bit different from the sugar building block. Your body notices the difference and processes sorbitol differently from household sugar. That is exactly why it is interesting for sugar-free products.

2. Where Does It Come From?

You encounter sorbitol almost every day without noticing it. It is in many sugar-free chewing gums, in toothpaste and in some nasal sprays. It can also be found in drinks without sugar.

There it is usually not alone. Often several sugar alcohols are together in a product so that it tastes sweet and feels good in the mouth.

Sorbitol is therefore not a find that you simply dig up. It is produced for these products and then mixed with other ingredients. That is why you find it in the ingredients list, sometimes under the name sorbitol, sometimes as syrup.

If you look at a packet the next time you shop, you can search for the word sorbitol. It is worth it, because it appears in places where you do not expect it.

3. What Are the Researchers Investigating?

There are many scientific papers on sorbitol: 112 in total. In 30 of them, research was carried out with humans, and in 13 a precise comparison was made.

A review examined sugar-free chewing gums that contain sugar alcohols like sorbitol. It looked at what happens with inflamed gums. Important here: several sugar alcohols are contained together in such chewing gums. So one cannot say that sorbitol alone has an effect.

Another study tested whether sorbitol reduces a bitter taste in the mouth. And a nasal spray containing sorbitol and a substance from algae was tested in hay fever. Here too, two substances are involved, so the effect cannot be attributed to sorbitol alone.

What is still open: whether sorbitol alone helps the teeth and what happens to it in the body. These questions are still outstanding.

4. An Experiment for Thinking

The next time you chew a sugar-free chewing gum, pause for a moment. It tastes sweet, and yet it says on the packet that there is no sugar in it. How does that fit together?

Your tongue does not check what a substance is called. It only reports: sweet. Sweet is therefore a message to your head, not proof that sugar is involved. The reverse also applies: not everything that tastes sweet is sugar.

Ask yourself once: how could one tell that two sweet things are nevertheless different? Perhaps by the feeling afterwards, perhaps not at all. Researchers also ask themselves such questions, and then they try out what really happens.

For adults and professionals: the detailed page on sorbitol.