How to Record a Sugar-Free Product or Sweetener in a Food and Symptom Diary

Write down the product and how much you had, then copy the sweetener names from the ingredients list exactly as printed, and add the label wording if it says “with sweetener(s)” or carries a laxative warning. “Sugar-free” on the front of a pack is too vague to compare, because it does not tell you which sweetener is inside. Recording the label wording preserves what you actually ate without deciding in advance that it explains a symptom.

This guide is about recording a product when the label is the only information you have. It cannot tell you whether a sweetener affects you, and it is not a reason to cut anything out.

Why “sugar-free” is too vague for a diary

A sugar-free sweet, a diet drink and a protein bar can use quite different sweeteners. Some are polyols (sometimes called sugar alcohols), such as sorbitol, xylitol and erythritol. The NHS page on sweeteners, last reviewed in February 2023, names those three and says polyols can have a laxative effect when eaten in large amounts. It also notes that some fruit and vegetables contain polyols naturally. Others, such as aspartame or sucralose, are different kinds of sweetener and are not polyols.

A diary entry that says only “sugar-free chocolate” would hide that difference. Two days could look the same in your record while the products were different, or look different when the sweetener was the same.

What to copy from the label

A short, consistent entry is enough:

1. The product and the amount. The brand or type, and roughly how much you had, such as “four sugar-free mints” or “one 330 ml can”.
2. The sweetener names. Copy the words from the ingredients list, for example “sorbitol, aspartame”. If the list gives an E number as well, copy that too.
3. Any wording near the product name. UK legislation on food information requires foods with an authorised sweetener to carry the words “with sweetener(s)”, or “with sugar(s) and sweetener(s)” when sugar has also been added. If the label says either, note it.
4. A laxative warning, if there is one. The same legislation requires the statement “excessive consumption may produce laxative effects” on foods containing more than 10% added polyols. The NHS describes the same rule. Its presence tells you the product contains added polyols; its absence does not tell you there are none, because the statement only applies above that threshold.
5. When and with what. The time, and whether it was eaten alone or with a meal, in the same way as for other items in your usual entries.

If you cannot tell whether a named sweetener is a polyol, record the name and leave it at that. UK trading standards guidance for businesses notes that sweeteners are listed by name, so you need to check whether each one is a polyol. It covers England and Wales. A reader is not expected to do that classification at the time of eating, and doing it later from your own note is easy.

Dietitian-written resources list the common polyols. Monash University’s FODMAP blog, dated May 2020, names xylitol, mannitol, sorbitol, erythritol, maltitol, isomalt and lactitol as polyols used as sweeteners. Treat a list like this as a reference for looking something up afterwards, not as a checklist of things to avoid.

Using the order of the ingredients list

Ingredients on a pre-packed food must be listed in descending order by weight at the mixing stage, with some exceptions: an ingredient making up under 2% of the finished product can be listed at the end. So a sweetener near the start of a list generally makes up more of the product than one near the end. That is a rough guide to relative amount within one product. It does not give you grams, and it cannot be compared across products with different serving sizes.

If you want to keep the note short, write the first few ingredients and the sweetener names, and record the amount you ate in your own terms. Do not try to calculate a dose from the label.

Natural sources and blends

Polyols are not only added to products. The NHS notes that some fruit and vegetables contain them naturally, so a diary that records only “sugar-free” items would miss part of the picture. You do not need to look up every food. Record fruit and vegetables the way you normally do, and if you later want to see whether polyols appear in several entries, you can check names in your own notes.

Products can also contain more than one sweetener. A systematic review of polyols found that, in healthy people, malabsorption increased when polyols were eaten in combination. That is one reason to copy every sweetener name from the list instead of picking the first one.

What the label cannot tell you

A systematic review by Lenhart and Chey (2017) screened 1,823 eligible articles and included 79. It reported that polyols can cause dose-dependent flatulence, abdominal discomfort and laxative effects in both healthy volunteers and people with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). The same review found conflicting results for polyol malabsorption in people with IBS and limited data on the microbiome in that group, and it called for further research on specific polyols.

Those findings come from studies of specific doses under study conditions. They show that polyols can have these effects in groups of people; they do not show that a particular product caused a particular symptom for you on a particular day. A label also cannot tell you:

• how much of a sweetener you actually had, beyond the rough guide above;
• whether something else in the product, the meal or the day was involved;
• how you would respond to the same product on another day.

For that reason, the diary entry should stay descriptive. “Four sugar-free mints at 15:00, sorbitol and aspartame, loose stool at 18:30” records two observations in order. “The mints gave me diarrhoea” turns one sequence into a conclusion. The same caution applies as in Can You Tell Which Meal Caused Bloating?: timing varies, repeats matter and other explanations remain possible.

Looking back across several entries

After a few weeks, you can ask plain questions of the record:

• On days with a sugar-free product, how did the rest of the day look compared with similar days without one?
• Were there days with the same sweetener and no change?
• Did the amount or the other foods eaten differ between days?
• Which entries only say “sugar-free” and have no sweetener name?

If a similar sequence appears repeatedly, that is a candidate pattern worth raising with a doctor or dietitian, with the diary as supporting information. Dietitian advice sometimes names polyols specifically: the British Dietetic Association’s IBS diet sheet (January 2022, listed as under review) suggests avoiding sugar-free sweets, mints, gum and drinks containing sorbitol, mannitol and xylitol in its advice for diarrhoea. That is advice for people with IBS, given in a clinical context. If you are thinking of changing what you eat, discuss it with a doctor or dietitian rather than treating a diary entry as the reason.

When to speak to a professional

A diary is not a substitute for care. The NHS advises seeing a GP if you think you might have IBS and symptoms have lasted more than four weeks. It advises asking for an urgent GP appointment or contacting NHS 111 for unexplained significant weight loss, bleeding from the bottom or bloody diarrhoea, a hard lump or swelling in the tummy, or breathlessness, noticeable palpitations or unusually pale skin.

If you take a medicine, a supplement or a product that is meant to affect your bowels, note that it happened, and do not change it because of a diary entry; ask a pharmacist or doctor.

Keeping this manageable

You do not need to look up every product. Copy the words on the pack when you eat it, or take a quick photo of the ingredients list to read later, and keep the entry short. If a meal photograph is part of your routine, remember that a photograph of a wrapper front will not show the sweetener; the ingredients list is the part to capture.

GutBloom is designed to let you log meals by photo, text or voice and add notes beside symptoms on one timeline. If that would make this easier to keep up, you can get GutBloom on Google Play.

Sources

• NHS — The truth about sweeteners
• legislation.gov.uk — Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011, Annex III (food information)
• Business Companion — Labelling of prepacked foods: ingredients list
• Lenhart A, Chey WD — A Systematic Review of the Effects of Polyols on Gastrointestinal Health and Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Advances in Nutrition, 2017
• Monash University FODMAP — Sweeteners and Low FODMAP Diet Guide (May 2020)
• British Dietetic Association — Irritable bowel syndrome and diet
• NHS — Symptoms of IBS