Not to blindly defend erthyritol, we should definitely look at it closer. But "less bad" doesn't mean good. Sugar is still very unhealthy.

As far as history: let me give you an extremely quick rundown. Diabetes was known to the ancients, but was extremely rare until the 18th century, when British sugar plantations made it affordable. (The slave labor involved wasn't very healthy, either). That's when diabetes, obesity, and extreme amounts of tooth decay reached the British working class.

Sugar was a very popular trading commodity for native populations. And they were even less equipped to deal with it: tooth loss, diabetes, obesity and cancer skyrocketed in these populations soon after Western diets were introduced (British Empire medical records are a great source for this).

Maybe we are back to that 'over processed foods' problem. None of the sugar replacements can be made in your kitchen because they need to be 'refined' way more than cane sugar.

Sugar is a massively processed food, and it's subsidized to make it artificially cheaper. It's really easy to spot new threats, but we it's hard to recognize the dangerous things we do every day.

I'm sorry, but that's a complete non sequitir. Look at housing prices, inflation or anything else that's gone up in the last 60 years. The amount of change is completely orthogonal to personal choices.

The obesity crisis is the flip side of smoking cessation. People didn't just decide to stop smoking: doctors/government agencies/NGOs ran a decades-long pressure campaign designed to highlight the risks.

Starting in the 70's, many of the same well-meaning people started demonizing fat and protein. The USDA, doctors (who are really good at medicine and surgery, but not at dietary advice) started recommending less and less fat and protein. Bad pop science associated dietary cholesterol with heart problems.

Something had to fill that dietary gap: cheap (and government-subsidized) carbs from corn and wheat. That's just about all poor people eat, because it's all they can afford. And guess who suffers the most from diabetes, obesity, heart attacks etc? The poor. Are you still so sure it's a choice?

Portraying obesity/metabolic diseases as a personal failure instead of a health crisis that affects the MAJORITY of Americans is a very Republican move. Are you sure you're not voting for Trump?

> “The amount in sugar substitutes is thousands of folds higher than what is made in our bodies, so to call it ‘natural,’ it’s not,” he [study author Dr. Stanley Hazen] said.

And what is the amount of sugar in the diet of a typical American? If we compare that to the amount of sugar in the human diet since the beginning of time, would we consider that "natural"? What about those "natural" fruits? Most are giant sugar globes, deliberately engineered to increase sweetness and reduce fiber.

Based on the article description, this study does nothing but implicitly back the Standard American Diet. You know, the one packed with modern strains of corn, sugar, and wheat? Before we freak out about some new sweetener, maybe we should start asking ourselves why the MAJORITY of Americans have metabolic diseases. It ain't from eating a few grams of sugar alcohols.

As it is, this article is like freaking out about a purse snatcher when your entire government is run by the mob.