Allulose Explained: Ask A Nutritionist

January 30, 2025

Is allulose the next big thing in sugar alternatives, or just another health fad? In this episode, we’re breaking it all down—what allulose is, does allulose raise blood sugar, and whether it’s actually a good option for you. We’ll cover the benefits, potential downsides, and what to look for when shopping for allulose. If you’re curious about sweetening your foods without the sugar spike, this episode is for you!

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Transcript:

LEAH: Hello and welcome to Dishing Up Nutrition's “Ask a Nutritionist” podcast brought to you by Nutritional Weight & Wellness. My name is Leah Kleinschrodt, and I'm a Registered and Licensed Dietitian. And this podcast strives to help people around the world make the connection between what they eat and how they feel.

I want to thank you all for your support and listenership over the years. And if you're enjoying this show, let us know by leaving a rating or review on your favorite podcast platform. Your feedback helps others find these important real food messages.

So on today's show, I will be answering a question that was actually posted in our Nutrition for Weight Loss private Facebook group, but I thought this question was applicable to our broader audience, so I plucked this one out of the lineup and wanted to do a short episode on it.

And this person asked, “Is allulose safe to consume as a sweetener?” So I fully admit this was a little bit of a personal research endeavor for myself. Also, I've been hearing about allulose for several years now, but I hadn't done my due diligence and taken the time to do a deeper dive into this product and all of its nuances.

What is allulose?

So lucky for all of you, you get to come along for the ride with me. So we're going to start with just tackling the question, what is allulose? Allulose is a sweet tasting rare sugar molecule. You'll see that come up a lot in any article or research around allulose is that it's a rare sugar and it's very similar to fructose and fructose being 1 of the main simple sugars, especially it's in fruit, it's in a lot of vegetables as well.

So this allulose is similar to fructose minus one or two little structural differences to it. And allulose is naturally occurring in some select fruits and vegetables, albeit it's, it occurs in very small amounts. And so you can find it in foods like jackfruit, molasses, raisins, maple syrup and figs, but thanks to modern technology, of course, allulose can now be created in larger quantities through an enzymatic process that takes fructose and it turns it into allulose.

Now, oftentimes the raw material or like that base of fructose comes from corn, which may not be the ultimate choice that we would want it for, but either way, we're kind of just taking the fructose out of that corn and converting it then into allulose. Allulose by definition is a carbohydrate. But, because of those one or two little structural differences that I mentioned, about 80 to 90 percent of allulose is excreted by our kidneys before it even gets turned into usable energy in the body.

Allulose contains negligible calories & may lower blood sugars some

So, in other words, it is negligible calories, it has a negligible impact on blood sugars. In fact, some research studies in humans suggest that allulose may lower blood sugars a little bit, which of course perks up a lot of ears in our society of insulin resistant citizens.

And this is through a number of different mechanisms. I'm not going to dive super deep into this, but I did want to explain, like, what is it about allulose that might actually be helpful for our blood sugars. So one of those is that, as I just mentioned, you know, we don't break down allulose really well and most of it just gets excreted in our urine. It gets excreted through the kidneys, so we don't actually turn it into energy in the body.

Another way that it helps blood sugar is that when allulose and glucose are both in the gut at the same time, they compete for absorption in the gut. They use the same transporters to get into circulation. So when you give them both together, allulose can actually prevent some of like our regular glucose from being absorbed into circulation.

So this is why again, in some studies, allulose is given alongside, say, a meal with that has more carbohydrates in it. People's blood sugar actually stays steadier because the allulose prevents some of that glucose from getting into circulation.

Allulose also acts on the L cells of the small intestine, which are the cells that produce the peptide GLP-1. GLP 1 is known for again, steadying blood sugars, even reducing some insulin resistance. And it does slow down digestion in the gut. It can help you feel a little bit more full. So again, like these are all helpful things, usually in the weight loss sphere.

And lastly, allulose also inhibits this enzyme, the enzyme is called alpha glucosidase, and this enzyme is the final step in breaking down starches and complex carbohydrates. So again, if we're eating, say, like a sweet potato, something that has more carbs to it, but this enzyme can't work as efficiently as it normally does just because we have some allulose in it. Now some of those carbohydrates and some of that stored sugar in the sweet potato does not get released and it cannot be absorbed. So those carbs just end up kind of passing through our gut and they exit without any impact on the blood sugar.

So that's a couple of ways that allulose can be beneficial for blood sugar. And I mentioned 80-90 percent of allulose is excreted through the kidneys. Well, the last 10-20 percent or so of allulose that comes in, actually passes through to the colon and the large intestine where some of it is consumed by a little bit of the bacteria that's in our gut. So in a sense, it can act like a prebiotic and then the rest of it just is excreted when we have a bowel movement.

So that's some of the scientific and physiology background on allulose. When we come back, we'll talk about the uses of allulose and some interesting side notes to pay attention to when you're thinking about trying allulose. So we'll be right back.

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How does allulose compare in sweetness level to sugar?

All right, we're back. So we were talking about allulose today, and we're going to get into a little bit more of the nitty gritty about the uses for allulose. So allulose is about 70 percent as sweet as regular table sugar. So this can be great if you're just looking to reduce sugar and overall sweetness in your diet, which in my opinion is probably a good move for most people.

However, if you're used to tasting a lot of sugar and a lot of sweetness from the foods and drinks that you consume, something sweetened with just allulose may seem a little underwhelming. So you'll find recommendations either on allulose packages or just recommendations out on the interwebs to use 30 to 50 percent more allulose to achieve the same level of sweetness as sugar.

So I looked at one package of allulose and it said, you know, for like, say, if you were using a cup of sugar in a recipe or, or doing something with that, you'll probably need about one and one third cup of allulose to get that same level of sweetness.

Are there any potential side effects from consuming allulose?

Also, while most of the studies that I looked at, the subjects in there didn't report any kind of negative GI side effects from using allulose in moderate amounts. If you jump into the comments section or on a blog post or any kind of public post about allulose, you'll see that still find reports of people who experience significant GI distress from trying allulose, similar to what people report with using sugar alcohols a lot of times. So bloating, gas, maybe some diarrhea, just like generally feeling a lot of discomfort.

From the research, the general consensus seems to point to about 0.4 grams of allulose per kilogram of body weight. That's what is considered to be a moderate dose for most people. So say if you have a 175 pound person, let's just take that for an example, that would amount to 32 grams of allulose per day would still be considered a moderate dose.

So I looked at one brand of allulose that's out there on the market and for that particular brand, two teaspoons of allulose was nine grams of allulose. So if you think nine going into 32, like you could get at least several more teaspoons of allulose in there before you kind of hit that, that upper limit.

I will say though, if you are someone who just tends to have more of a sensitive digestive tract like I do, or you've had trouble with some of the alternative sweeteners in the past, the advice if you were going to try allulose would just be to start low and go slow.

One other notable thing that showed up in some of the research around allulose that I did is that it may decrease HDL levels. So HDL, you'll see that on your cholesterol panel, your lipid panel. It's typically what we call like the good cholesterol, the more protective kind of cholesterol. You know, the mechanism why allulose decreases HDL is unknown.

And there, you know, there aren't any studies out there at this point to say, is this a truly significant finding? Is it a truly detrimental finding? No one knows just yet. It was just something interesting that I gleaned from some of my reading that I wanted to bring up in terms of discussing allulose.

Summary

So to summarize, allulose is a naturally occurring rare sugar molecule that is being used as an alternative sweetener in our food system these days. It does not increase blood sugar and insulin levels. It may even decrease them, which can be helpful for a lot of people. Depending on the person, it may or may not cause some GI upset and it may or may not lower HDL levels.

You know, the human studies done using allulose up to this point have been promising. But in all fairness, these studies have also been very small in nature, and they've been very limited in their scope and what they're looking at. So I do think we need to stay tuned as more information comes out about allulose and how it affects us as humans, especially.

You know, allulose is about 70 percent as sweet as regular table sugar, so you might need to use more allulose by volume to achieve the same sweetness as an equivalent amount of sugar. And also, if you decide to go shopping around the store or the internet for allulose, don't forget to read the label. Some brands do sell pure allulose, and I'd recommend that you go for an organic brand if you can find that. While others combine allulose with other non-caloric sweeteners like monk fruit or stevia.

So it kind of just depends on what you're looking for. If you're just looking for straight up allulose, just be sure to turn the package over and look and see that that's the only ingredient in there.

So overall, in my professional opinion, I would say allulose seems like an alternative sweetener that is worth a shot. As usual, when you're starting anything new, start low, go slow, especially if you've had some issues in the past.

And just remember that too, it still is usually a good thing to moderate our intake of just sweet things overall, whether that is from actual sugar or whether it is from some of these non-caloric sugar alternatives. So the more sweet we taste, the more sweet we tend to want. And so just even limiting our use of some of the non-caloric alternatives out there can be helpful for just breaking some of those sugar cravings or breaking some of the sugar habits.

So I hope that was helpful for this person who posted the question in our Facebook group, but also for the broader audience. I want to thank you all again so much for listening to our “Ask a Nutritionist” episodes. And if you found this helpful, just leave us a rating and review on your favorite podcast app.

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