Study links artificial sweetener xylitol to higher cardiovascular risk

For decades, xylitol has occupied a quiet corner of the modern diet, embraced as a gentler alternative to sugar and granted the reassurance of regulatory approval. Now, a study of nearly 18,000 people across Canada and Europe has introduced a note of caution into that comfort: higher blood levels of xylitol appear consistently linked to greater risk of heart attack, stroke, and death — a pattern that held across age, sex, and other known risk factors over periods stretching up to thirty years. The findings do not overturn what we know, but they widen the space of what we do not, inviting a mor