Glycemic Index vs Glycemic Load: Why Zeroh Has Both at Zero

By Rebalance Life Nutrition Team | Last Updated: January 2026
Glycemic Index vs Glycemic Load: Why Zeroh Has Both at Zero

You've probably heard about "low-glycemic foods" for diabetes management. Your doctor recommends them. Dietitians emphasize them. Food labels tout them. But here's the problem: most people and many healthcare professionals confuse Glycemic Index (GI) with Glycemic Load (GL).

This confusion leads to poor food choices. A patient avoids watermelon (high GI) but eats a large bowl of brown rice (high GL). A diabetic switches to "low-GI" sweeteners but still experiences blood sugar spikes. Why? Because they're tracking the wrong metric.

In this comprehensive guide, we'll clarify:

  • The critical difference between Glycemic Index and Glycemic Load
  • Why Glycemic Load is more practical for real-world meal planning
  • How to calculate GL for any food or recipe
  • Real examples: Indian dishes with regular sugar vs. Zeroh Sugar
  • How replacing sugar with Zeroh lowers both GI and GL of your favorite foods
  • Practical meal planning strategies for diabetes, PCOS, and weight loss

The Zeroh Advantage: Zeroh Sugar (monk fruit + allulose) has a Glycemic Index of 0 and a Glycemic Load of 0. When you replace regular sugar with Zeroh, you're not just eliminating a high-GI ingredient you're dramatically reducing the total glycemic load of the entire dish.

Transparency statement: This article is published by Rebalance Life, manufacturer of Zeroh Sugar. However, the GI/GL science applies to all low-glycemic sweeteners, and we'll provide objective examples to help you make informed dietary decisions.

In August 2024, Dr. Hazen's team published follow-up research in the journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology that directly tested erythritol's effects in healthy human volunteers.

Study Protocol

Twenty healthy participants consumed either:

  • 30 grams of erythritol (equivalent to one erythritol-sweetened beverage or dessert)
  • 30 grams of glucose (control)

Blood samples were collected at baseline and at multiple time points over 72 hours to measure plasma erythritol levels and platelet function.

Results

The intervention study confirmed the earlier findings with alarming clarity:

  1. Plasma Erythritol Levels: After consuming just 30g of erythritol, plasma concentrations spiked to >4,000 µM within 30 minutes more than 1,000 times higher than baseline levels.
  2. Prolonged Elevation: Erythritol levels remained significantly elevated for more than 2-3 days, consistent with its long plasma half-life (~24 hours).
  3. Platelet Hyperreactivity: In every single subject who consumed erythritol: Platelet aggregation responses increased significantly Measures of platelet adhesion and activation were elevated The effect persisted for the duration of elevated plasma erythritol
  4. No Effect from Glucose: Participants who consumed glucose showed no changes in platelet reactivity, confirming that the effect was specific to erythritol, not a general sugar response.

Clinical Significance: These findings suggest that routine consumption of erythritol even in amounts commonly found in a single serving of sugar-free food or beverage can create a prolonged prothrombotic state lasting several days.

To understand why erythritol poses unique cardiovascular risks, we need to examine how the body processes it or more accurately, doesn't process it.

Absorption and Metabolism

Erythritol has unusual pharmacokinetic properties:

  • 90% absorption in the small intestine - much higher than other sugar alcohols like xylitol (~50%) or sorbitol (~25%)
  • No metabolism - erythritol is not broken down by human enzymes and passes through the body unchanged
  • Renal excretion only - elimination depends entirely on kidney function

The Critical Problem: Long Plasma Half-Life

Erythritol's plasma half-life is approximately 24 hours. This means:

  • After 24 hours, half the erythritol consumed is still circulating in your bloodstream
  • After 48 hours, 25% remains
  • After 72 hours, 12.5% remains

For people who consume erythritol daily (morning coffee, afternoon snack, evening dessert), this creates a bioaccumulation effect plasma levels never return to baseline, progressively increasing with each consumption.

Peak Plasma Concentrations

The 2024 intervention study found that a single 30g dose of erythritol produces peak plasma concentrations of ~500 µM (micromolar). This is critical because:

  • Platelet activation begins at concentrations as low as 0.1 mM (100 µM)
  • Typical erythritol consumption easily exceeds this threshold
  • The effect is dose-dependent higher concentrations produce stronger platelet activation