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Common low-calorie sweetener linked to heart attack and stroke, study finds [kraken14 at] A low-calorie sweetener called xylitol used in many reduced-sugar foods and consumer products such as gum and toothpaste may be linked to nearly twice the risk of heart attacks, stroke and death in people who consume the highest levels of the sweetener, a new study found.

“We gave healthy volunteers a typical drink with xylitol to see how high the levels would get and they went up 1,000-fold,” said senior study author Dr. Stanley Hazen, director of the Center for Cardiovascular Diagnostics and Prevention at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute. “When you eat sugar, your glucose level may go up 10% or 20% but it doesn’t go up a 1,000-fold,” said Hazen, who also directs the Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Microbiome and Human Health.

“Humankind has not experienced levels of xylitol this high except within the last couple of decades when we began ingesting completely contrived and sugar-substituted processed foods,” he added.