▲ 80 points
back
87 comments
I looked around a bit wondering why they’d even contain glycerol. Apparently, it’s a sugar substitute that has similar antifreeze properties as real sugar:
https://foodcomplianceinternational.com/industry-insight/new...
I checked ICEE ingredients here in the US, and they don’t seem to contain it.
Their FAQ says no such sugar substitute exists:
(Though it also fails to mention that their products are loaded with HFCS).
My guess is that looking for brands that are sugar based or at least advertise they’re free of artificial sweeteners is probably the right move.
I looked for Slurpee (#2 brand in US) ingredients, but could only find them for Canada, with a note saying they vary by country. Canada doesn’t have any sugar free offerings, and none contain glycerol.
The US has a sugar free oreo slurpee that sounds terrible. I’d like to see the ingredient list for it!
Fast food places often have non-branded ones.
McDonald's doesn't appear to have it:
> Ingredients: Carbonated Water, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Caramel Color, Phosphoric Acid, Natural Flavors, Caffeine, Quillaia Extract, Yucca Extract.
https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/product/frozen-coke-small...
Neither does Taco Bell:
> Carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup, citric acid, natural and artificial flavor, sodium citrate, yucca Mohave extract, sodium benzoate (P), potassium sorbate (P), calcium sodium EDTA (PF), blue 1 (C), red 40 (C).
It's in McD's UK strawberry version;
https://www.mcdonalds.com/gb/en-gb/product/frozen-strawberry...
I've always wondered what makes high-fructose corn syrup so uniquely bad among sugars. AFAIK, 10g of sugar is 10g of sugar, regardless of if it's fructose, glucose, sucrose or lactose.
Of course Americans love their products stuffed with sugar.. your ordinary bread is almost like a really fluffy cake. But in that case there's just more sugar, so the culprit is easily identified :)
> AFAIK, 10g of sugar is 10g of sugar, regardless of if it's fructose, glucose, sucrose or lactose.
Remember that we rely on very noisy abstractions in many sciences, and especially in biology, nutrition, and public health. In terms of the (abstract) model of calories-as-fuel, different sugars mostly all have the same effect of providing about 4 calories per gram. And in terms of the (abstract) model of glucose-as-blood sugar, they all get more or less converted to glucose eventually.
But behind those useful high level abstractions, these are all different molecules and bodies have different ways of processing them: different gut absorption and biome effects, different organs, different catalysts, different pathways, different rates of processing, etc.
So from certain views, yes, "sugar is sugar" but from other views each compound that we call sugar is a different molecule and this implies critical and sometimes quite impactful differences in how any body may respond to it at any given time.
> AFAIK, 10g of sugar is 10g of sugar, regardless of if it's fructose, glucose, sucrose or lactose
Sucrose is just fructose + glucose.
There is actually evidence that the sugar makeup (fructose vs glucose) makes a differences in how it is metabolized, but the bigger impact seems to be coingestion of fiber.[0] Added sugars don't usually come alongside "added fibers". (this is also partially why glycemic index is strongly correlated with added sugar content but much less with naturally present sugar content)
[0] https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/the-bitter-tr...
The body processes sugar compounds differently. Fructose is typically not preferred amongst athletes (bodybuilders, runners, etc). Reasons being Fructose's low absorption and requirement that it be processed by the liver - it needs to be converted to Glucose before the body can even use it. Fructose also lowers physical activity and increases body fat compared to glucose in the same dose and calorie intake.
So no.. all sugars are not equal.
From what I learned 15 years ago, but am too lazy to fact check now...
Fructose is metabolized in the liver, i.e. similar to alcohol. Glucose can be used directly by cells. The biggest issue is that fructose doesn't tell the brain that you've had enough, while glucose does (I'm guessing it's because of the delay the liver adds.) So you can eat more fructose than glucose without starting to feel weird. At the same time, you're straining the liver.
If you're eating equal parts glucose and fructose (like sucrose), it's not a problem, as your body is used to it and can adjust its glucose sensitivity. But if you completely remove that signal substance, it doesn't stand a chance.
My personal lived experience is that HFCS is easier to consume more of. A 12-ounce can of HFCS sweetened soda is easier to drink than the same size, same brand, sugar sweetened beverage. The sugar sweetened version gives me feelings of done / too much that the HFCS version doesn't.
But yeah, we like to put sugar in everything, because we learned fat was the devil in the 70s? and when you remove all the fat, adding in sugar makes things palletable again. :p
Fructose is metabolized through the liver where it gets converted to glucose and other molecules. I assume it would put more stress in the body to metabolize a large amount of fructose, compared to glucose.
> Of course Americans love their products stuffed with sugar
When these are the only products available to buy, “love” is a bit strong of a word choice I think. Certainly we consume shitloads of sugars— but for a great many of us its all that is available.
I sure do “love” my poor health, enforced by poverty and shit products available to me.
When they have separate names and are separate chemicals, why would 10g of sugar where the proportions could be any of those four be considered equivalent?
there is not much evidence that fructose is worse than glucose, but in principle part of it is because fructose permeates cells via diffusion while glucose must be pumped into the cell; so it consumes more energy to produce energy from it. There's also differential ability of different cells in the body to process glucose vs fructose
> fructose, glucose
In the end calories are calories, but what I learned from endurance sports is that these two surgars have different transport pathways. You can absorb a certain amount of each one individually up to your individual chemistry's max.
I see no reason to think either the manufacturing process or the glucose-fructose balance is a problem.
It is just a cheap way to make a lot of sugar. That makes sugary foods cheap. Which helps make people diabetic and fat due to overconsumption.
You're not going to get evidence where foods with sugar swapped with HFCS have different hard health outcomes. You're just going to get HNer storytelling about why HFCS is magically bad and blog posts.
Same problem as LED lighting: fine in concept but so cheap that it's suddenly easy to have way too much of it.
It looks like US (edit: sugar-free) Slurpees contain 968 (Erythritol) and 955 (Sucralose) but it seems like the UK and Ireland mostly use glycerol in slushies so far.
(second edit: this was mistakenly from the .au 7-11 page, I couldn't find reliable US ingredients either.)
> Apparently, it’s a sugar substitute that has similar antifreeze properties as real sugar
Does sugar have any "antifreeze properties"? The ways I know to make a sugar drink into a slushie are alcohol or salt (like ice cream.) Sugar and water just makes sweet ice.
> I checked ICEE ingredients here in the US, and they don’t seem to contain it.
I don't think ICEEs ever did, but I think 7-11-style "Slurpies" always have. It's why Slurpies are creamy and ICEEs are not.
> advertise they’re free of artificial sweeteners is probably the right move.
I don't think that the glycerol is used for its sweetness at all, but for its lack of saltiness and because it's not alcohol. They're trying to keep the drink from freezing for the sake of the creamy texture, which I have to say is objectively better than without glycerol.
It seems that glycerol is having an alcohol-like effect on tiny-livered people. I had most of my best slurpees before I was 8, though. If they got me a little drunk, all the better.
I have protein bars with it in it. It’s used for sweetness, stickiness, and also because it doesn’t cause a cooling sensation in the mouth.
In the UK (the study was covered the UK and Ireland) using glycerol rather than sugar avoids the "sugar tax" on sugar in drinks (I assume slushies as taxed at drinks).
The tax was imposed mostly to encourage people to consume healthier sweeteners instead of sugar.
> looking for brands that ... advertise they’re free of artificial sweeteners is probably the right move
Glycerol is not considered an artificial sweetener, or labeled as such.
"It is a colorless, odorless, sweet-tasting, viscous liquid." ... "It is also widely used as a sweetener in the food industry and as a humectant in pharmaceutical formulations."
> It also recommends children between five and 10 are limited to no more than one slushie a day.
I would really hope most people would have imposed such a limit on their kids already.
The correct number of slushies per day is zero.
And an hour of exercise, no sweets, a healthy diet, 10+ hours of sleep, etc. However the real world works differently.
Imagine you spend a family day at the fair, a full 10-12 hours. Allowing your 8yo to get two slushies throughout the day doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
After reading this and realizing that glycerol is processed in the liver like ethanol, I can't help but wonder if slushies will also cause adverse effects with medicines that interact poorly with alcohol.
... or just damage the liver itself.
I’ll go out on a limb and say that everyone should avoid “slushies” as they’re nothing but frozen sugar.
The ones containing glycerol are sugar-free.
But anyway, the scientists agree:
“From a public health perspective, there are no nutritional or health benefits from these drinks and they are not recommended as part of a balanced diet. Recommendations on their safe consumption therefore need to be weighted towards safety.”
>The ones containing glycerol are sugar-free.
Well glycerol is not sucrose but it has more calories per gram than sucrose and the FDA requires the glycerin content per serving to be declared as sugar alcohol.
>Glycerin (sometimes spelled glycerine), or glycerol, is a sweet, syrupy liquid that is about 75% as sweet as sucrose. It is chemically categorized as a polyol with 4.32 kcal/g. ... If the label has a statement regarding sugars, the FDA requires the glycerin content per serving to be declared as sugar alcohol.
https://diabetesjournals.org/spectrum/article/17/3/137/2007/...
I would perhaps amend that statement for adults to: consume it on very rare occasions as an enjoyable treat, but certainly not frequently.
These packaged slushies have glycerine in them. Glycerol is also known as glycerin.
https://www.amazon.com/Icee-Slush-Frozen-Fruit-Pouches/dp/B0...
Maybe we shouldn't be drinking sugary antifreeze.
>The study looked at the medical notes of 21 children aged between two and seven in the UK and Ireland who fell ill after consuming the drinks between 2009 and 2024.
Is this just a sample of 21 among a larger set of children, or is that all the children that could be found that had this reaction?
I wonder how much glycerol they use, the article is scant on data.
You'll often see somewhere around 10g of glycerol in a protein bar, bodybuilders take quite a bit too in order to increase water in muscles and it's safe [0].
Glycerin is also used for baking, used for stuff like fondant.
The original paper: https://adc.bmj.com/content/early/2025/02/10/archdischild-20...
I have used Glycerol in a low sugar/low fat icecream I made in a home ice cream maker; it works pretty well at stopping it freezing solid, so I can see why it's there.
So does a small quantity of Arrowroot, I used to add that when making my own ice cream.
Be aware that glycerol has as many calories as regular sugar. It does have a lower glycemic index, though.
Or, you know, one should not be permitted to sell slushies to children.
Who would have thought that anti-freeze is not healthy to ingest?
That's glycol, not glycerol. Ethylene glycol is especially toxic, while propylene glycol may be used as a food additive (E1520, or E490 for pharmaceuticals).
the way this is worded, is that responibility is bieng downloaded onto "Children under 8", whereas I am absolutely shure that there is no toxin that
effects only children
remarkable how this appears right out in the open
like it's a technical discussion involving the placement of a regulatory warning sticker.
From the paper, they are going by body weight, and then a conservative age as a proxy:
“To ensure safe population-level recommendations can be easily interpreted at the individual parental level, and given the variability across an age cohort of weight, we suggest that recommendations should be based on weight rather than age.
“Alternatively, the recommended age threshold may need to be higher (eight years), to ensure the dose per weight would not be exceeded given normal population variation in weight.”
This is quoted at the end of the Guardian article, which is better than the Sky one: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/mar/12/under-eights...
We are at a point were we are being feeded acfual poison directly..
These have been on sale for at least 50 years.