Maltitol

What It Is

Maltitol is a sugar alcohol, or polyol: a disaccharide alcohol, close to sucrose in molecular weight, melting point and how it holds moisture, and it is the most sugar-like of the common polyols in taste. In a 16-sweetener sensory panel it matched sugar at 0.89 to 0.95 times its sweetness, and the authors grouped it with xylitol as the sweeteners “most similar to sucrose”. That is one panel, not a specification. Those properties are why it is the usual sweetener in sugar-free chocolate.

In the EU it is E 965, which covers two different things: crystalline maltitol and maltitol syrup, a mixture. The difference matters more than the shared name suggests, because most maltitol syrups raise blood glucose noticeably more.

Blood Glucose: The Least Sugar-Free Polyol

Maltitol has the highest glycaemic index of the crystalline sugar alcohols. A 2003 review pooled nine studies and put it at GI 35 (glucose = 100), with an insulin index of 27. In the same review sucrose is 65 and erythritol 0. The syrups run higher:

• High-maltitol syrup: GI 48
• Intermediate-maltitol syrup: GI 53
• Regular maltitol syrup: GI 52
• High-polymer syrup: GI 36

In chocolate, where most people meet it, something else happens. The glucose response falls (GI 29), but the insulin response rises to an index of 82, against 76 for chocolate made with sugar. In the review’s words, “maltitol-based chocolate has an II comparable with sucrose-based chocolate”.

Two cautions about these numbers. They are pooled figures from older studies, not a modern standardised GI test, and we found none newer. And the review was commissioned by the European Polyol Association. The same review is the source of every polyol GI on this site, erythritol’s 0 included, so that conflict applies to all of them, not only to maltitol.

Calories and Net Carbs

FDA’s calorie factor for crystalline maltitol is 2.1 kcal per gram, about half of sugar’s 4. The EU uses 2.4 kcal/g for every polyol except erythritol. Maltitol syrup is not in FDA’s table, and the regulation does not say whether a syrup takes maltitol’s 2.1 or the 3.0 for hydrogenated starch hydrolysates. We do not guess.

This site counts half of maltitol’s grams toward net carbs. For a product that lists “maltitol syrup”, even that may under-count: regular syrup’s GI of 52 is not far below sucrose’s 65. Many US “sugar-free” products use the syrup, so read the ingredient list for the word “syrup”.

On a US label, maltitol sits inside Total Carbohydrate but not under Total Sugars or Added Sugars. A separate Sugar Alcohol line is voluntary unless the label makes a claim about sugars or sugar alcohols. In the EU, carbohydrate “includes polyols” and sugars “excludes polyols”.

Tolerance: The Food Matters More Than the Dose

The popular idea that maltitol chocolate gives everyone diarrhoea overstates the controlled trials. How you eat it changes the result:

• In chocolate (young adults, eaten as breakfast): 30 g caused no significant symptoms, and 40 g only mild wind and gut noise. “Maltitol did not have any laxative effect when ingested at either 30 g (P = 0.32) or 40 g (P = 0.13) per day.”
• In water, on an empty stomach (Japanese women, average 52 kg): 22 of 27 had osmotic diarrhoea at doses between 20 and 45 g. None did at 15 g. The maltitol was donated by a manufacturer.
• Spread through the day and raised until symptoms appeared (12 people): the average threshold was 93 g a day on maltitol and 113 g on sugar, and the gut did not adapt over nine days.

The chocolate studies are read here from their abstracts, and their funding was not visible.

Laxative Labels

In the EU, a food with more than 10% added polyols must say “excessive consumption may produce laxative effects”. In the US, no rule requires a laxative statement for maltitol, unlike sorbitol (from 50 g a day) and mannitol. An eCFR search finds maltitol only in the nutrition-labelling and dental-claim regulations. Any laxative line on a US maltitol product is the maker’s own choice.

Regulatory Status

The US position is the quiet surprise. Maltitol has no FDA food-additive regulation, no GRAS affirmation and no GRAS notice. Towa Chemical filed a petition to affirm it as GRAS in 1986. The docket holds correspondence into 1994 and is now marked closed, but no rule followed. Maltitol is sold on its makers’ own GRAS determination. FDA does name it in two regulations, for its calorie factor and the dental-caries claim, so descriptions of it as “approved by the FDA” are loose. We read the docket’s record, not its documents, which could not be opened.

• JECFA (the joint FAO/WHO expert committee): ADI “not specified” for maltitol (confirmed 1993) and maltitol syrup (1997).
• EU: authorised as E 965 through the polyols group, at quantum satis in energy-reduced or no-added-sugar foods. EFSA’s re-evaluation is still ongoing. Consumer sites that cite a “2019 EFSA re-evaluation of maltitol” are contradicted by EFSA’s own sweeteners page, which on 27 October 2026 listed it as ongoing. Of the polyols, only erythritol’s has been finished (2023).

Baking and Teeth

Maltitol is not a reducing sugar, so it cannot brown by the Maillard reaction. It is not colourless in the oven, though: a controlled biscuit study found it “unexpected that sorbitol and maltitol biscuits are, after all, exceptionally colourful”. Maltitol biscuits came out lighter than sugar ones, especially at the edges. It browns less, rather than not at all.

Maltitol is named in the US dental-caries health claim and in the EU’s tooth-mineralisation claim for sugar replacers. Both rest on its not lowering plaque pH, not on trials counting cavities. The EU’s blood-glucose claim says only that foods with maltitol “instead of sugar” give “a lower blood glucose rise” than the sugar version. It does not say maltitol leaves blood glucose unchanged, and a GI of 35 says it does not. The American Diabetes Association’s 2019 consensus report: “there is little research on the potential benefits of sugar alcohols for people with diabetes”.

Comparison Note

Against erythritol: erythritol has a GI of 0 and 0 kcal/g on a US label, against maltitol’s 35 and 2.1, so it raises blood glucose less. Erythritol carries its own open questions, though. Its 2023 EU ADI of 0.5 g/kg a day was set on diarrhoea. Blood erythritol levels have been associated with cardiovascular events in several cohorts, three genetic (Mendelian randomisation) studies point the same way while one review cites null ones, and in a 2024 trial a 30 g dose raised platelet reactivity. Causation is not established, and the erythritol page sets the evidence out in full. This site’s maltitol record has no open safety signal, but it also has no cardiovascular study comparable to those run on erythritol. No signal because nobody has looked is not the same as a clean result.

Against sorbitol: the opposite trade-off. Sorbitol barely moves blood glucose (GI 9) but has more calories (2.6 kcal/g) and causes symptoms at lower doses. Against xylitol: similar sweetness; the two are the polyols closest to sugar in taste. Maltitol is a sugar reducer, not a sugar eliminator.

What would change this page: an independent, modern GI and insulin test of maltitol and its syrups in the foods people eat; EFSA finishing its E 965 re-evaluation; or FDA stating a calorie factor for maltitol syrup.