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Maltitol is a plant based sweetener made from starch, and it is the reason most no added sugar chocolate exists. It gives almost the same sweetness as sugar with nearly half the calories per gram, and it behaves like sugar in the kitchen, which is why chocolatiers reach for it first when the sugar comes out.
You will find it on the label of every bar in our No Added Sugar range. Here is what you are actually eating.
What is maltitol made from?
Maltitol starts as starch, usually from corn or wheat. The starch is broken down into maltose, the malt sugar that gives it its name, and hydrogen is added to convert that maltose into maltitol. The result looks and pours like granulated sugar.
Technically it belongs to a family called sugar alcohols, also written as polyols, though there is no alcohol in the drinking sense anywhere near it. Erythritol, xylitol and sorbitol are cousins from the same family, all covered in our guide to sugar alcohols. On ingredient lists it appears simply as maltitol, and on the Nutrition Facts label sugar alcohols get their own line under total carbohydrate.
Why do chocolate makers use maltitol?
Because chocolate is unforgiving. Sugar does three jobs in a bar: it sweetens, it provides bulk so the bar has body, and it sets the texture behind a clean snap and a slow melt. Take sugar out and most sweeteners fail at the second and third jobs. Stevia, for example, is hundreds of times sweeter than sugar, so a bar's worth of sweetness fits on a teaspoon tip and something else must fill the space.
Maltitol solves this neatly. The International Food Information Council puts it at about 90 percent as sweet as sugar, so it swaps in almost gram for gram. The bar keeps its body and its snap, and no aftertaste needs masking. Two of ours show what that means in practice:
6.7 g sugars per 100 g, all naturally occurring, almost entirely from the milk
Does maltitol raise blood sugar?
Maltitol is digested slowly and absorbed only in part, which changes how the body handles it compared with sugar. The International Food Information Council describes it as slowly and incompletely metabolized in the small intestine, and that slow ride is why it produces a lower, more gradual rise in blood glucose than the same amount of sugar:
Slowly and incompletely metabolized in the small intestine into equal amounts of glucose and sorbitol.
How the International Food Information Council describes maltitol digestion
Lower does not mean zero, and anyone tracking their intake should count it from the label like any other carbohydrate. The part that is not absorbed travels on and is fermented by gut microbes, the same way fiber is. That slow, partial ride is also why a first encounter with a lot of sugar alcohols is something to ease into, exactly as you would with a high fiber food. Your gut adjusts.
How many calories does maltitol have?
US nutrition rules count maltitol at 2.1 calories per gram, against 4 for sugar. Chocolate remains chocolate: cocoa butter and milk bring their own energy, so a maltitol bar is not a low calorie food and we will never pretend otherwise. The nutrition label carries the full sugar and calorie numbers. What changes is the added sugars line. The FDA's Daily Value for added sugars is 50 g a day, and a bar sweetened with maltitol instead of sugar draws nothing from that budget. Regular milk chocolate is typically more than half sugar by weight. Ours is not, and the label shows it.
Which Diablo products are sweetened with maltitol?
Most of them. Maltitol is the workhorse across our range: the No Added Sugar chocolate bars, the Hazelnut Chocolate Spread with its 8.6 g of naturally occurring sugars per 100 g, the wafers, the cakes, the dessert sauces and most of the Sugar Free range too. A few recipes go their own way. Our hard candies lean on isomalt, a sugar alcohol cousin. The gummies pair steviol glycosides, the sweet compounds from the stevia leaf, with sugar alcohols. And the peanut butters need no sweetener at all, because the ingredient list is 100% Peanuts and nothing else.
The two names on our packs describe the sugar, not the sweetener. Sugar Free means less than 0.5 g of sugars per serving, the US legal threshold. No Added Sugar means we added none, and any sugars on the label occur naturally in ingredients like milk, cocoa and fruit. The claim on the front means exactly what it says.
Frequently asked questions
Is maltitol a sugar?
No. Maltitol is a sugar alcohol, a separate category of carbohydrate. On a US Nutrition Facts label it appears under total carbohydrate on its own sugar alcohol line, not on the sugars line. That is why a bar sweetened with maltitol can carry so little sugar.
Is maltitol vegan?
Maltitol itself is, since it is made from plant starch. Whether a finished product is vegan depends on the rest of the recipe: milk chocolate is not, while several maltitol sweetened products are. Check the label on each product.
What is the difference between maltitol and stevia?
Maltitol is a bulk sweetener made from starch that replaces sugar almost gram for gram, which suits chocolate. Stevia comes from the leaves of the stevia plant and is hundreds of times sweeter than sugar, so it is used in tiny amounts. Both appear across the Diablo range and each product page lists its sweetener. We weigh the two up in stevia vs maltitol.