FODMAP groups
Sorbitol foods: the full list, scored 0–100
Sorbitol is a sugar alcohol, or polyol — the P in FODMAP. Mannitol is the other one you will see measured most often, and maltitol, xylitol and isomalt belong to the same family. The small intestine absorbs it slowly and only up to a point, so whatever is left over carries on down: it draws water into the bowel as it travels, then gets fermented by gut bacteria further along, which produces gas. It reaches you two ways — grown into certain fruit and vegetables, and added to manufactured products, where it sweetens and keeps things moist. That second route covers the sweet aisle and the medicine cabinet alike.
Where it turns up
- Stone fruit and orchard fruit: apricots, peaches, nectarines, plums, cherries, apples and pears — plus the juices pressed from them.
- Dried fruit, where the water leaves and the sorbitol stays. Prunes, dried apricots and dried apple carry far more per handful than the fresh fruit did.
- Sugar-free and 'no added sugar' products, where it is a common sweetener: gum, mints, boiled sweets, chocolate, protein and low-carb bars. Not every one uses sorbitol — the ingredients list names which sweetener is in there.
- Foods most people assume are neutral — blackberries and sweetcorn both carry it.
- The bathroom cabinet rather than the kitchen: liquid medicines, cough syrups, chewable vitamins and throat lozenges are commonly sweetened with sorbitol.
- On labels it appears as sorbitol, sorbitol syrup, glucitol or E420 — and and it often sits alongside other polyols such as maltitol, xylitol and isomalt.
Portion changes the answer
Sorbitol is absorbed slowly rather than not at all, so a smaller serve may be taken up before much of it reaches the large intestine, while a bigger serve of the very same food outpaces that and the excess simply travels on. How much is absorbed varies a good deal from one person to the next. Amounts also stack — two or three modest sorbitol servings close together behave much like one large one, which is why a food can score low here and still add up over an afternoon.
How to test whether sorbitol is actually yours56 foods carrying sorbitol
Heaviest first. Lower is gentler: 0 means eat freely, 100 is the heaviest in our dataset.
14 of these 56 foods have no established low-FODMAP serve in our dataset. We say so on the row rather than leaving the line blank.
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