I've been following this story and I think you should know about it. If you haven't met Dr. Tro, here's why you should. He's a colleague of mine that uses the ketogenic diet and he has been outing LMNT for several months now. I just caught on, but here's the story.
If you are just following the LMNT story, they said that there's four milligrams of maltodextran per package. Now notice this is not what's on the label. You had to ask them what was in it and This is what they've been saying for years. But it turns out there's more than 100 times more of this maltodextran per package. And they hid it under the natural flavors, only disclosing in July when they were outed.
Dr. Trull points out that there's more maltodextran in the LMNT than the potassium or magnesium combined. And again, it's supposed to be an electrolyte replacement packet. Well, here's the article the LMNT posted in July.
telling their audience about this. However, to find the article, you actually have to Google maltodextrin and LMNT. It was a little harder for me to find from the front page of their website. I don't know, maybe it's a marketer that's writing the article because they sure do dodge the accountability that should be transparent in a company who outwardly says they have no dodgy chemicals in their product.
His explanation is they don't add it to the label. because it's a flavor carrier, not an added ingredient. And the author who says it's Rob Wolf says that I've personally tested myself with continuous glucose monitors and never seen blood sugars increase using LMNT. And of course, Rob Wolf is healthy.
He's really healthy. So I wouldn't expect his blood sugars to rise. But in my patients, the ones who have insulin resistance for years and years, they already make a pathologic amount of insulin even when they're eating whole foods.
You take a highly processed, super small molecule like maltodextrin, and you watch the abundant, in fact, the pathologic production of insulin that happens with this. And although their sugars might not change much, their insulin will shoot way up, and it will prevent them from progressing to the healthy life that they're after. And Rob's belief that maltodextrin in such a small amount shouldn't matter.
And in fact, if it was actually four milligrams of this, I would not be making this video. But it's almost a half a gram. And in that ingredient that they are hiding and then not disclosing even when being asked, well, this is where there's more trouble here.
Because this isn't the first company that's hid their ingredients behind the words natural flavors. Several years ago, my teenage son became addicted to LaCroix. Like, he would get twitchy, get very irritable if there wasn't some in the house. My husband, who's known to have some allergies, took a drink of LaCroix and within hours had mouth ulcers.
This caused him to look into the ingredients further and lo and behold, there's a lawsuit against LaCroix because of what they're hiding behind natural flavors. In this instance, they were using not just a natural ingredient, but a modulator of the brain. A modulator that only a few sprinkles per million was needed to increase the cravings and the addiction and the want for LaCroix.
So if you've ever been stuck in the cycle that that's your favorite drink, beware. This dodgy molecule did all sorts of things. If you read this blog by Kate Shanahan, she did a great job of not just explaining what was in it, but why the case got dismissed because...
Well, the lawyers really argued over what is natural ingredients and what is a synthetic molecule, and it turns out this one was difficult to say the difference. The lawyers might have had a much more successful approach had they asked the question, LaCroix, why do you use a dodgy molecule that manipulates the brains of your customers without telling them? It's the manipulation that violates the trust between a company and the consumers.
When I first started using Element, I noticed that it Tasted too good. So knowing myself, I backed away and I just used plain salt for my electrolytes. With LaCroix and LMNT, the problem lies within not telling your customers what you're putting in the ingredients so they have disclosure about what you're doing.
I don't make an electrolyte product, but I do make products and my label has natural flavors in it. When I was first making it, I kept trying to get the manufacturer and the flavor guy to tell me. What does it mean to have that in there?
It wasn't until I traveled to the manufacturer, hung out with him for a couple of days, before I understood, oh, here is what he's saying. And in the end, they never allowed me or any of their customers to print what flavors were put into natural flavors. So this trap is in the industry.
Electrolytes are really important in the world of exercise, low carb, or just trying to stay healthy. Personally, and what I tell my patients is to just use mineralized salt. And I find that is effective and helpful and the right price tag. But a close second, and something my teenage boys use, is a product that is more transparent about what's in their label, and they love the taste.
It's called Sal-T. But anytime you're using a product that has natural flavors in the label, listen to your body. If you don't feel well, stop taking it.
There's probably something hidden in there.