Erythritol (E968): What the Sources Found

Erythritol is the sweetener the food industry lists as E968. In our table it is high risk: it takes 30 of the 33 additive points off a product's score for a child.

In short

High risk. 30 of the 33 additive points come off a product that carries it.
Flagged for young children. Set only where EFSA’s own exposure assessment shows toddlers or children exceeding or approaching the ADI, or where a regulator used explicitly child-specific language. For a child under 6 it moves one class up.
3 citations from EFSA, Peer-reviewed, each one below.

What Erythritol does to a score

A packaged food starts with 33 points for what is in its ingredient list. Erythritol takes 30 of the 33 additive points off a product's score, and a child under 6 sees it one class higher again. Scan the pack in Sito and the score you get is the one for your own child's age, with this additive named in the reasons. How we score has the whole method.

What the sources found

Every classification in our table comes from the citations below, and nothing else. They are quoted as the source wrote them.

EFSA Journal 2023;21(12):8430, doi:10.2903/j.efsa.2023.8430 (PMC10731997), published 2023-12-20; plus EFSA plain-language summary
First-ever numerical ADI of 0.5 g/kg bw/day set from a NOAEL for diarrhoea; erythritol is not genotoxic; EFSA states that in all population groups both acute and chronic exposure sits above the new ADI, and that the highest mean and 95th-percentile chronic exposure was in children (742 mg/kg bw/day) and adolescents (1,532 mg/kg bw/day) respectively — i.e. children were the most exposed group at the mean, a MEAN exceedance in a child age group.
Peer-reviewed Witkowski et al. 2023, Nature Medicine, doi:10.1038/s41591-023-02223-9
Plasma erythritol was associated with roughly doubled 3-year risk of major adverse cardiovascular events in at-risk cohorts, with mechanistic support from enhanced platelet reactivity and thrombosis after ingestion — a signal not reflected in current EFSA/FDA status (adult-cardiac, not paediatric).
Peer-reviewed Witkowski et al. 2024, Arterioscler Thromb Vasc Biol, doi:10.1161/ATVBAHA.124.321019 (PMID 39114916)
Ingestion of erythritol, but not glucose, enhanced platelet reactivity and thrombosis potential in healthy volunteers — the interventional follow-up to the 2023 cohort finding.

Why this class

IARC Group 1 or 2A with a dietary exposure route; or EFSA has withdrawn or negated a safety conclusion; or EFSA’s own exposure assessment finds a child age group exceeding the ADI at mean intake; or the substance is banned or formally being phased out for food use by the EU, by the US FDA, or under a US state law.

Our confidence in this row's classification is high. Medium or low does not mean the evidence is weak; it means something about the row is still being pinned down, usually a regulatory status confirmed from one source rather than two.