What the world needs is a………Xylitol

Xylitol could save your teeth!
So what is…Xylitol?
It’s a sweetener derived from the fibrous parts of plants. Similar in taste to regular sugar but with a significant difference—-the Xylitol molecule contains five carbon atoms rather than 6 found in most other sugars.
This molecular difference is the key to Xylitol’s beneficial qualities of taste and functionality.
Significant among the various benefits of Xylitol relate to chewing gum and toothpaste. Toothpaste needs Xylitol, and you need toothpaste with Xylitol and here’s why:
the larger molecule in Xylitol means bacteria cannot stick to your teeth as it does when using toothpaste with sugar. This difference is crucial to cavity prevention.
While fluoride is said to help prevent cavities and should be in everybody’s toothpaste, the sugar in the toothpaste must cancel a good deal of the fluoride advantage.
Dentists who stump for fluoride might agree with this!?
Melaleuca I believe is one of the first companies to use Xylitol in it’s tooth polish. I’ve been using Melaleuca’s tooth polish for just about a year and my visit to the dentist in January for a teeth cleaning served me with a couple of surprises: (1) my teeth were cleaner than they had been the last time I was in for a cleaning, time lapse of 12 months(missed my 6 month visit) and (2) my gums were stronger, and less prone to bleeding when encouraged to do so.
There was no hint of a cavity even though in my life BM(before Melaleuca) cavities caused me trouble continuously .
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If Xylitol was only good for toothpaste that would be a large positive but it is also excellent in the substitution of sugar in making muffins, pretty good in making cookies and I haver never tried it in bread.
Xylo-sweet, one of the several companies now marketing Xylitol, says Xylo-sweet can be substituted for most common sweeteners without compromising taste or texture and I have found this to be true although I used it to make Nutmeg-mousse and it didn’t work. In this case the Xylitol did not bind with the eggs and that was that!
But another Xylitol positive is one that will be cheered by more than even the tooth polish crowd….IT’s LACK of AFTER-TASTE! There is none! I’ve found every other sugar substitute I’ve ever tried Stevia, Aspartame,….going back to that dinosaur-Cyclamates came with after-taste.
But not Xylitol. And according to the sellers it is 25% lower in calories than regular sugars, but with the same sweetness. The substitution is 1.1.
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Major problem to some is the cost.  Xylitol is expensive but that may help focus your attention on how much sugar you consume.
It’s all about cost versus benefits.

It is the best of all the non-sugar sweetners but without much of a CV to date although it is rapidly gaining wider acceptance.