In 2020, the Keto diet was the most Googled diet in the U.S., with over 25 million unique searches.
The popular, high-fat, low-carb diet aims to help people lose weight and improve their health by reducing carbohydrates to less than 50 grams per day, and sometimes as low as 20 grams.
Adherent’s of the diet aim to get more calories from fat and protein, and less from carbohydrates, in an effort to put the body into ketosis — a metabolic state characterized by raised levels of ketone bodies in body tissues — and cause it to burn fat instead of glucose for energy.
Keto diets often use artificial sweeteners because they can satisfy a craving for sweetness without significantly increasing carb intake or affecting blood sugar levels.
Erythritol, a sugar alcohol commercially produced by fermenting corn, is an artificial sweetener often used in keto diet products.
Fox News reports on a new study that links erythritol to an increased risk of heart attacks and strokes. Here’s the start of the story:
A common artificial sweetener has been linked to an increased risk of heart attacks and strokes, according to a new study from Cleveland Clinic.
Erythritol, a sugar alcohol that is used to sweeten many low-sugar, reduced-calorie drinks and foods — particularly in low-carb or “keto” diets — was found to cause a spike in blood platelets and blood clot formation, researchers say.
The findings were published in the journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology.
The team’s previous study, which appeared in Nature Medicine, found that heart patients with high levels of erythritol in their system had double the risk of experiencing a major cardiac event within three years.
“In this study, we directly compared drinking a sweetened drink with either 30 grams of glucose, which is sugar, or 30 grams of erythritol,” senior author Stanley Hazen, M.D., PhD, co-section head of preventive cardiology at Cleveland Clinic, said in a video provided to Fox News Digital.