i want it all(ulose)

The "-ose" With the Most

I had the great pleasure of doing a short presentation for some good folks at Johns Hopkins recently, and I figured some of you might be interested too. How did lil’ ol’ Big Dave come to be given such an honor? Well, there’s a story there.

See, one of the more unusual presentations at this year’s Metabolic Health Summit was a lunchtime panel on a new(ish) non-caloric sweetener called allulose, sponsored by a company that makes said product, RxSugar. My first instinct was to skip what sounded like an infomercial, but the panel featured an all-star lineup of some of the best-known thinkers in the ketogenic space: Drs. Dominic D’Agostino, Richard Johnson, Ben Bikman, Jeff Volek, and others. I figured I’d put off lunch for a bit and check it out. I’m glad I did.

As it happens, my own dietician, Bobbie Henry-Barron, was also in attendance, and we were comparing notes afterward. “Hey,” she said, “What if you do a little presentation on what you learned for our upcoming keto Valentine’s Day party?” Of course I agreed, so using the info from that panel, plus a little bit of my own research, here’s what I shared:

what it is

Approved by the FDA in 2015, allulose is known as a “rare sugar.” Like the other “-oses,” (sucrose, fructose, glucose, lactose…) it’s a sugar that’s found in nature. What makes it rare is that it’s found only in small quantities, in things like maple syrup, brown sugar, and dried fruit. Companies have discovered a way of extracting it from plants and distilling it into a powdered form that you can use to sweeten up your coffee or, say, make limeade.

ridiculously easy recipe: 2 tsp allulose, 8 oz water, 1 oz lime juice

the good

Allulose has zero calories, which makes it a good sugar replacement for those trying to lose weight. It’s also keto-friendly, because although it has carbs, the carbohydrates in it are not absorbed by the body. Bobbie recommends counting 1g of carbs for ever 10g you ingest — an idea called “net carbohydrates.” Unlike many natural sweeteners, such as stevia, it has no bitter aftertaste. Also, it holds up well in cooking and baking, where some sweeteners don’t.

the bad

But all that goodness doesn’t come cheap. I’ve been looking around, and most brands cost somewhere around 12 bucks a pound (though I recently found a one-pound canister of RxSugar on sale for $6.99 at Walgreens — you can find it in the back, by the diabetes stuff).

On top of that, allulose is not quite as sweet as sugar, coming in at about 70% of the sweetness of the leaded stuff. That means that if you’re substituting it in a recipe, you’ll need to use 1 1/4 cups for every cup of sugar that your recipe calls for.

Also, like many of the sugar alcohols (xylitol, sorbitol, etc) it can cause some digestive upset if you overdo it — like indigestion and, er, let’s call it disaster-pants. It’s best to try a little at first and work your way up to larger doses.

the interesting

It’s early days, but several studies find not only a lack of harm, but actually some beneficial effects of allulose ingestion. In some trials it was found to enhance glucose control and insulin sensitivity — a result of particular interest to anyone with diabetes or insulin resistance. In fact, it’s been shown more effective than the drug metformin and the herbal remedy berberine in some patients.

Dominic D’Agostino, though not diabetic himself, has shared on instagram some of his self experiments with the stuff (along with his usual content of raising backyard cows and deadlifting 500 pounds). (Seriously, the guy’s a phenom). Here’s a picture from his continuous glucose monitor (CGM) showing his real-time blood sugar response to 20g of allulose, in the form of 2 RxSugar bars:

Further — and this one’s a bit wonky for me — it’s an epimer of fructose, meaning that it binds to the fructose receptors, so that if you consume it before eating a meal with some carbohydrate, you won’t have the same blood sugar response or the same damaging effects from the fructose (more about the evils of fructose in a future post). Dr. D’Agostino has shown this on IG, too: eating a sweet potato raised his blood sugar 50 points. Sweet potato after 2 RxSugar bars, no rise. Crazy!

Another study has shown that allulose has a beneficial effect on the gut microbiome — the balance of bacteria that live in the intestine. This is particularly good news, given all we’re learning about the importance of gut health, and given that some other artificial sweeteners have been shown to actually harm the bugs in the gut.

Finally, and this one’s super-interesting, it’s been shown to stimulate the release of GLP-1. If that particular letter-number combo sounds familiar, it might be from my article — or one of the thousands of others — about the diabetes/weight-loss drugs Ozempic, Wegovy, and others. These drugs are basically a synthetic form of GLP-1, and when you inject a whole lot of it, it has the effect of making you feel fuller for longer, thus curbing cravings and cutting overeating. Allulose stimulates the body to produce its own GLP-1, leading to an appetite suppressant effect, so it’s being called by some “nature’s Ozempic.”

Oh, and there’s some research showing benefits in endurance exercise, fat oxidation, and glycogen supply to muscles. No biggie, right???

my take

Too good to be true? Probably, but I’m a skeptic by nature. Plus, there is an argument that you’re better off cutting out sweets completely, until you lose a taste for them, rather than stringing yourself along with replacements. It’s a good point, especially for folks who are big time sugar addicts, or who tend to be what Gretchen Rubin calls “abstainers” in her well-known book The Happiness Project. That’s been mostly my approach over the last few years, and I do have some hesitation around reintroducing sweets into my regular diet. Also, not everyone is down with the idea of “net carbs,” preferring to stick to total carbohydrates. I personally tend toward this view, as well, though I go back and forth.

But hey, I’ll try anything once. After the talk, I stopped by the RxSugar booth and chatted a bit with Dan Craytor, one of the execs at the company. Really nice guy, and we shared some good stories. In opposition to my generally anti-processed-food stance, I took one of the samples — a small chocolate bar they call “Swealthy Snax” that’s about the size of a single Twix — and stuck it in my shirt pocket. Around 5:00 that day, with two hours to go before the evening’s dinner, I got to feeling a bit peckish. I remembered the RxBar and gave it a shot. Very tasty, I must say, and I found it did ward off the hunger for those couple of hours.

For the Johns Hopkins keto party last week, I made allulose fudge using a recipe I found here. I’ve never made fudge before, but it was actually super simple (just 5 ingredients, about 20 minutes) and it turned out great.

I plan to keep experimenting with allulose for the next few weeks, so I’ll keep you posted on what I find. Meanwhile, if you want to learn more about the research on allulose, there’s a great episode of The Metabolic Link that you can find here on YouTube or on your favorite podcast platform

If you do to give it a try, give me a shout in the comments and let me know how it goes! One note to my local Alexandria friends, though: don’t bother looking for it at Walgreens — I just bought the last container.