Maltodextrin: The Starch Filler Behind 'Sugar-Free' Labels — and the Blood-Sugar Question

What maltodextrin is

Maltodextrin is a white, flavourless powder made by taking an ordinary starch — usually corn, potato or rice in the US, wheat or tapioca elsewhere — and cutting it part-way down into short chains of glucose. The US Food and Drug Administration's definition (21 CFR 184.1444) calls it "a nonsweet nutritive saccharide polymer that consists of D-glucose units linked primarily by α-1-4 bonds and that has a dextrose equivalent (D.E.) of less than 20", prepared "by partial hydrolysis of corn starch, potato starch, or rice starch with safe and suitable acids and enzymes". Its CAS number is 9050-36-6.

The dextrose equivalent, or DE, is the number that separates maltodextrin from its neighbours. Glucose itself is DE 100 and native starch is near DE 0; maltodextrin sits at DE 3–20. Push the hydrolysis further, past DE 20, and the same process produces dried glucose syrup (corn syrup solids) instead — a different ingredient with a different name. The powder carries about 4 kilocalories per gram, the same as starch and glucose, and no fibre and no micronutrients: it is energy and nothing else.

One distinction matters before anything else. Digestible maltodextrin is not resistant maltodextrin. Resistant maltodextrin (sold as a fibre ingredient, for example Fibersol-2) is chemically rearranged so the gut cannot digest it; it behaves as a soluble fibre at roughly 2 kilocalories per gram. The two share a name and a starch origin, and almost nothing else — the research, the regulation and the blood-sugar story in this article are about the digestible kind, which is the kind on ingredient lists.

Tip: if a label says "maltodextrin" with no qualifier, it is the digestible kind. Resistant maltodextrin is labelled as such, or under a fibre brand name, because its selling point is the fibre.

Why manufacturers use it

Maltodextrin is popular for the same reason it is hard to notice: it does several unglamorous jobs at once, cheaply, without adding flavour, colour or sweetness of its own.

• Thickener and bulking agent — it gives body to instant puddings, soups, sauces and dressings, and bulk to products that would otherwise be mostly air or a pinch of something expensive.
• Carrier — flavours and intense sweeteners are spray-dried onto maltodextrin, which is why a sweetener packet is mostly filler: the sweetener itself is measured in milligrams and needs something to carry it.
• Stabiliser and freeze control — it keeps textures even in frozen desserts and powdered mixes.
• Fast energy — in sports drinks it is a carbohydrate that empties from the stomach quickly and digests fast, which is exactly what an athlete mid-session wants and exactly what a person watching blood sugar does not.
• Infant-formula carbohydrate — it supplies energy and replaces some or all of the lactose in lactose-free, reduced-lactose and soy formulas, and it is easy to digest.

None of these uses is secret or deceptive in itself. The reason maltodextrin lands on a flagged-ingredients list is not that manufacturers hide it — it is printed on the label in plain sight — but that what it does in the body does not match what its name suggests to a shopper.

Where you will find it

Maltodextrin is one of the most widely used food ingredients in the world, and it turns up in places its name would never suggest:

• Sports and energy drinks, and protein and meal-replacement powders
• Instant puddings, soups, sauces, gravies and salad dressings
• Candy, baked goods, snack bars and breakfast cereals
• Tabletop sweeteners — a Splenda packet is about 1% sucralose, the rest mostly maltodextrin filler
• Infant formula, especially lactose-free and soy formulas
• Some medicines and vitamin powders, where it carries the active ingredient

It is also worth knowing how the ingredient looks to the databases shoppers check. The advocacy group EWG's Food Scores database lists maltodextrin as an ingredient in thousands of products, and its ingredient page for Maltodextrin (Rice) states that "no concerns have been identified" — EWG, an advocacy organisation rather than a regulator, does not rate the ingredient itself as a concern. That is the tension at the heart of this article: the ingredient scores as unremarkable on a safety database and still behaves like sugar in the body.

Related: Added sugars — the sweeteners maltodextrin is often confused with, and why the numbers from WHO, the FDA and EFSA disagree.

The concern: blood sugar

The blood-sugar case against maltodextrin does not rest on a single scary number. It rests on two things that are better documented than any number: how fast it is digested, and what happened when researchers fed it to people.

A 2016 review in Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition (Hofman, van Buul & Brouns) examined the digestion of maltodextrins and concluded that the idea that low-DE maltodextrin digests slowly is "a misconception… not supported by any research data": enzymatic digestion is rapid, and absorption is "not being different from absorption after ingestion of pure glucose", with comparable insulin responses and oxidation rates during exercise. The review's summary is blunt: "no causal relationship between the consumption of MDs and negative health effects has been reported" — but also that "exchanging unprocessed starch with maltodextrins may lead to an increased glycemic load and therefore post meal glycaemia, which are viewed as less desirable for health".

The human data agrees. In three double-blind randomised crossover trials published in 2024 (Johansen et al., Metabolites), maltodextrin was the reference carbohydrate: healthy volunteers (15 people, 50 g), people with overweight or obesity (26 people, 33 g and 50 g), and people with type 2 diabetes (22 people, 50 g, average HbA1c 7.4%) each drank maltodextrin in 300 mL of water after fasting. The test carbohydrate reduced the glucose rise in the first hour by 19% in healthy volunteers (not statistically significant), 38% at 33 g and 28% at 50 g in the overweight group, and 38% in the diabetes group, with insulin down 38–60% — which is another way of saying the maltodextrin dose produced a large, rapid glucose and insulin response in all three groups. Two caveats belong with that finding: the trials were funded by industry (Nestlé), and maltodextrin was the comparator rather than the intervention being tested.

There is also a number in this story that deserves a warning of its own. Maltodextrin is commonly quoted as having a glycaemic index of 85–105 — higher than table sugar at 65. That range cannot be traced to a published GI test of maltodextrin itself. The 2002 Foster-Powell international GI table does not list maltodextrin as a standalone food (it lists only soy milks "containing maltodextrin", at GI 36–44), and the 2008 Atkinson update summarises 62 common foods — glucose 103 ± 3, sucrose 65 ± 4, fructose 15 ± 4 — without maltodextrin in the table. The 85–105 range circulates in secondary sources that cite the GI tables generically, with no underlying test named. Part of the confusion is maltose, the two-glucose unit, which does have a published GI of 105. So this article will not present 85–105 as a measured fact: the honest statement is that maltodextrin is commonly quoted there, the quote cannot be traced, and the blood-sugar concern stands on the digestion and human-trial evidence instead. Sucrose scores lower (65) for a simple reason: only half of it is glucose — the fructose half is cleared mostly by the liver and contributes little to the immediate blood-glucose rise.

One more place the same fast digestion matters: teeth. Maltodextrin is fermentable by oral bacteria, and a 1995 analysis found that maltodextrins and glucose syrups in infant teas contained undeclared fermentable sugars (maltose, maltotriose, glucose) up to 0.7%, concluding that intake of such products "must lead to an uncontrolled sugar consumption". A 2025 laboratory study found lactose-free infant formulas — which use maltodextrin or glucose syrup as the carbohydrate — promoted S. mutans biofilm and lowered biofilm pH to 4.23–4.28, against 5.26 for the control. Both are limited evidence (the 2025 study was in vitro, and it tested whole formulas, not maltodextrin alone), and sucrose remains the dominant cariogenic sugar. But the direction is the same as the blood-sugar story: maltodextrin behaves in the mouth much as it behaves in the gut.

Tip: if you manage blood sugar, count maltodextrin in your carbohydrate total, not in your sugar total — the label puts it under Total Carbohydrate, and that is the line that matters for you.

The concern: gut health

The second concern is newer, more interesting, and much less settled: a series of animal and cell studies suggests maltodextrin can change the gut's mucus barrier and its microbes. Every study in this section is preclinical. No human trial has shown maltodextrin causing gut disease in people, and the distinction matters more here than anywhere else in this article.

The thread starts with Crohn's disease. In 2012, Nickerson & McDonald reported in PLoS One that maltodextrin "markedly enhanced" biofilm formation and adhesion to human intestinal cell layers by LF82, the adherent-invasive E. coli strain associated with Crohn's disease, acting through type-1 pili — and that the malX gene, needed to metabolise maltodextrin, was more common in the ileal mucosa of Crohn's patients than in controls. That was laboratory work, not people. In 2014 the same group found dietary maltodextrin promoted Salmonella survival and colonisation of the gut lining in mice.

The most cited animal study is Laudisi et al. (2019, Cellular and Molecular Gastroenterology and Hepatology). Mice given 5% maltodextrin in their drinking water for 45 days developed no visible colitis on their own — but when challenged with a colitis trigger (DSS or indomethacin), they developed severe colitis and lost 10–15% of their body weight, against minimal colitis in controls. The mechanism the authors traced was endoplasmic-reticulum stress in goblet cells, producing misfolded Mucin-2 and a depleted mucus layer; an ER-stress inhibitor prevented it. Ten weeks of maltodextrin alone produced low-grade intestinal inflammation on tissue examination, without clinical colitis. The authors themselves noted that 5% is "equivalent to levels commonly found in infant formulas", while conceding that less maltodextrin is likely to reach the far end of the human gut than was given to the mice.

A 2022 study in colitis-prone mice (Zangara et al., Frontiers in Immunology) fed chow with 1% maltodextrin (DE 10.7) for up to 11 weeks: colitis rose from 11% of mice to 25%, onset moved earlier (from 5 weeks to 2), microbiome diversity fell, faecal acetic acid fell, goblet cells decreased, and microbes sat closer to the gut lining. In microbe-free gut-cell layers, maltodextrin directly reduced goblet-cell numbers and mucus. A 2018 study in Crohn's-prone mice fed Splenda — which is about 1% sucralose and 99% maltodextrin by weight — found gut-microbe disruption and raised myeloperoxidase, but no worsening of tissue inflammation, and the effect cannot be attributed to maltodextrin alone because sucralose was present too.

Two pieces of context keep this honest. First, a 2008 rat study of Splenda reported large drops in gut bacteria — total anaerobes down about 50%, bifidobacteria 37%, lactobacilli 39%, Bacteroides 67.5% — but it tested Splenda, not maltodextrin alone; a 2009 expert panel judged the study deficient and its conclusions unsupported; and the journal issued an Expression of Concern about it in 2024. Second, a 2022 systematic review (Almutairi et al., European Journal of Nutrition) found that of 70 placebo-controlled human trials that used oral maltodextrin as the "placebo", 42 — 60% — reported maltodextrin-induced physiological, microbial-metabolite or microbiome effects. Maltodextrin is a poor placebo, which is a problem for trial design — and also means a large human-trial literature has inadvertently documented that it is not inert.

The editorial that accompanied the Laudisi study put it plainly: the work found no major change in microbiota composition, so the effect looks independent of the microbiome, and human relevance is unproven. The fair summary is that the gut concern is real science at the animal and cell level, at doses of 1–5% of diet or drinking water, with no human outcome data — a research question, not a proven hazard.

Related: Carrageenan (E407) — the seaweed thickener whose gut-inflammation debate, unlike maltodextrin's, includes small human trials.

The 'sugar-free' labelling trap

Here is where maltodextrin earns its place on a label-reading site. It is a polysaccharide — a chain of glucose units — not a mono- or disaccharide, so for labelling purposes it is not a sugar. On a US Nutrition Facts panel it sits under Total Carbohydrate, not under Total Sugars and not under Added Sugars. A product can therefore be legally "sugar-free" while containing grams of maltodextrin, and the shopper reading only the sugar lines will never see it.

The rules on the one line that could catch it — Added Sugars — differ by country, and the difference is the whole story:

• United States. "Sugar free" requires under 0.5 g of sugars per reference amount and per serving (21 CFR 101.60(c)). The FDA's final guidance of November 2018 states that when an ingredient containing mono- and disaccharides created through controlled hydrolysis — maltodextrin is named as the example — is added to a food, those mono- and disaccharides "need to be declared as added sugars on the label". The final guidance also removed the draft version's 0.5 g-per-serving de minimis threshold, so all of that fraction must be declared. In practice: the maltodextrin molecule as a whole is a carbohydrate, but its small sugar fraction (under 20% by definition, since DE is under 20) counts toward the Added Sugars line. A product can still show low or zero Total Sugars while containing substantial maltodextrin.
• European Union. "Sugars-free" requires no more than 0.5 g of sugars per 100 g or 100 mL (Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006). "With no added sugars" requires no added mono- or disaccharides, and no other food added for its sweetening properties. Maltodextrin is not named in the rule, and because it is not sweet and is not added for sweetening, a maltodextrin-containing product can in principle carry the claim — but that turns on the "used for its sweetening properties" test, and the honest description is that it is a grey area, not a clear permission.
• Australia and New Zealand. The Food Standards Code is the strictest of the three. Its definition of "sugars" expressly includes "maltodextrin and similar products", and Schedule 4 lists maltodextrin as an "added sugar" for "no added sugar" claims — so a food with added maltodextrin cannot claim "no added sugar" in Australia or New Zealand. "Low sugar" means 5 g or less per 100 g for solids, or 2.5 g or less per 100 mL for liquids.

The same label can therefore be lawful in one country and misleading in another, and the shopper who trusts the front of the pack is the one who loses. The fix is boring and it works: read Total Carbohydrate, not Total Sugars.

Related: Added sugars — what counts, and why WHO, the FDA and EFSA give three different numbers.

What regulators say

Every major regulator has looked at maltodextrin and left it alone — but they have done so in different ways, and the differences are instructive.

United States. Maltodextrin is generally recognised as safe under 21 CFR 184.1444, with no maximum use level — "the ingredient is used in food with no limitation other than current good manufacturing practice". The affirmation dates to 1983 for corn starch, with potato starch added in 1995 and rice starch in 1998. One detail worth noting: the regulation names corn, potato and rice starch only, so wheat- and tapioca-derived maltodextrin are not covered by that section by name, though they are widely sold in the US. The FDA's Substances Added to Food inventory lists it with technical effects including anticaking agent, humectant, stabiliser/thickener and texturiser.

European Union. Maltodextrin has no E number, because it is not legally an additive at all. A direct check of Annex II of Regulation (EC) No 1333/2008 — the Union list of authorised food additives — returns zero matches for "maltodextrin", and only listed substances may be used as additives. It is a food ingredient, a starch hydrolysate, and it has no specification in Regulation (EU) No 231/2012 either. There is also no standalone EFSA safety opinion on maltodextrin: the 2017 EFSA re-evaluation that is sometimes cited covers modified starches (E1404–E1452), a different category, and found no safety concern at reported uses with no need for a numerical ADI.

Internationally. JECFA has never evaluated maltodextrin as an additive in its own right; it treats it as an intermediate in the production of enzyme-treated starches, a process it has said produces normal, safe food constituents, and it does not require toxicological testing of it. The "not specified" ADI that is sometimes attached to maltodextrin belongs to modified starches as a group (evaluated in 1982, 2016 and 2021), not to maltodextrin itself — the accurate statement is that JECFA has set no numerical limit for it. Codex's infant-formula standard (CXS 72-1981) says lactose and glucose polymers "should be the preferred carbohydrates" in cows'-milk and hydrolysed-protein formulas; maltodextrin, a glucose polymer, falls under that language without being named.

Australia and New Zealand. FSANZ treats maltodextrins as ingredients, not food additives — its Application A491 assessment states they "are therefore already permitted for use in the manufacture of foods, subject to any public health and safety considerations". Ordinary digestible maltodextrin has no specification in the Code; resistant maltodextrin does (Schedule 3, DE 8–12), which is one more reason not to confuse the two.

Bans and reviews. Maltodextrin is banned nowhere and appears on none of the enacted US state ban lists — California's AB 418 names brominated vegetable oil, potassium bromate, propylparaben and Red 3; West Virginia's HB 2354 and HB 4852 name dyes, BHA and propylparaben. California's AB 2034, a 2026 bill that would have deemed ingredients unsafe without a safe harbour, stalled in committee and did not name maltodextrin — and maltodextrin would meet its safe harbour anyway, as a substance recognised in federal regulations as GRAS. The live structural change is the FDA's proposed rule of August 2026 (91 FR 51834, comments due 9 December 2026) to make GRAS notification mandatory rather than voluntary: it revokes no GRAS substance, establishes no premarket approval, and does not name maltodextrin — and because maltodextrin's status rests on a codified Part 184 affirmation rather than a self-affirmed determination, it is among the least affected substances. No FDA warning, import alert or reassessment naming maltodextrin was found in 2026.

Infant formula. The EU is the most specific: Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2016/127 permits malto-dextrins as one of only eight allowed carbohydrates in infant and follow-on formula, with total carbohydrate at 9–14 g per 100 kcal and a lactose minimum of 4.5 g per 100 kcal — so maltodextrin can only ever partly replace lactose. The US sets nutrient specifications per 100 kcal (21 CFR Part 107) but no carbohydrate-source list; maltodextrin's GRAS status covers its use, and the FDA's 1995 notice records that potato-derived maltodextrin "has been used in infant formula prior to 1958 with no reported adverse effects". Australia's Standard 2.9.1 does not name maltodextrin at all, bans added fructose and added sucrose (except up to 20% of available carbohydrate in partially-hydrolysed-protein formula), and requires no detectable gluten.

The debate

Who should avoid it

Maltodextrin is not an ingredient most people need to avoid. The people who should think about it are specific, and the reasons are different for each of them.

• People managing blood sugar. If you have diabetes or watch your glucose, maltodextrin deserves the same attention as sugar: it is digested to glucose about as fast as glucose itself, and the 2024 human trials show a 50 g dose producing a large, rapid glucose and insulin response, including in people with type 2 diabetes. Count it in your carbohydrate total and discuss it with your clinician — the label will not do the thinking for you.
• People with inflammatory bowel disease. The animal evidence — mucus depletion and worse colitis in mice, stronger E. coli adhesion in cell studies — is a reason to discuss it with your clinician, not a reason to self-prescribe avoidance. There is no human evidence that maltodextrin causes or worsens IBD, and the doses in the animal studies were high.
• People with corn allergy. True corn allergy is rare, and reactions to highly purified corn derivatives such as maltodextrin are uncommon — many corn-allergic people tolerate them — but challenge testing is the way to establish tolerance, and corn-derived maltodextrin is the commonest kind in the US. No case of anaphylaxis to maltodextrin itself was found in this research.
• People with coeliac disease, where the maltodextrin is wheat-derived. The manufacturing process removes gluten protein to well below the 20 ppm threshold, so wheat-derived maltodextrin is effectively gluten-free — but the declaration rules differ by country, which is the practical problem. In the EU, wheat-based maltodextrin is explicitly exempt from allergen emphasis (Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011, Annex II). In the US, wheat must be declared as a major allergen. In Australia, the label must read "maltodextrin (wheat)" with a Contains statement. Ultra-sensitive individuals may prefer corn-, potato- or rice-derived maltodextrin, which is gluten-free by source.
• Parents choosing infant formula. Maltodextrin adds calories, not nutrition — no fibre, no micronutrients, and unlike lactose it is not the carbohydrate in breast milk. The EU's answer is a lactose floor (at least 4.5 g per 100 kcal), so maltodextrin can only partly replace lactose. One case report urges extra caution in a specific group: an extremely premature infant (born at 27 weeks) with bile-duct paucity and non-IgE cow's-milk allergy developed severe abdominal distension two weeks after maltodextrin supplements were started for low blood sugar, and the symptoms resolved when they were stopped. A single, medically complex case is the weakest evidence tier — but the authors' conclusion, "caution with the use of maltodextrins in infants, especially if premature", is worth knowing.

How to spot it on a label

Maltodextrin is one of the easier ingredients to spot, because it is declared under its own name. The hard part is knowing what the name does and does not tell you.

• The name itself. It appears in the ingredient list as "maltodextrin", in descending order of weight — if it is near the top of the list, there is a lot of it. It has no E number, so do not look for one.
• Its neighbours. Dried glucose syrup and corn syrup solids are the same process taken past DE 20 — a different ingredient, and a sugar in effect. Dextrose (glucose, DE 100) is a sugar and does count as added sugar. Maltodextrin sits between them, and the DE line is the difference.
• The wheat question. If the maltodextrin is wheat-derived, a US label must declare the wheat, an Australian label must show "maltodextrin (wheat)", and an EU label need not emphasise it at all. The same product can therefore look different in three countries.
• The numbers that matter. Check Total Carbohydrate, not Total Sugars — maltodextrin lives on the carbohydrate line. In the US, check the Added Sugars line for the small mono/disaccharide fraction it contributes. In Australia, remember the whole ingredient counts as an added sugar for "no added sugar" claims.
• The front of the pack. "Sugar-free", "no added sugar" and "unsweetened" are claims about sugars, not about fast carbohydrate. A product can carry all three and still be built on maltodextrin.

Related: High fructose corn syrup — the other corn sweetener whose label story turns on dose and comparator.

Alternatives: what replaces it

There is no drop-in "healthy maltodextrin", because the job it does — cheap bulk and fast-digesting carbohydrate — is the job itself. The honest swaps are swaps of the product, not of the ingredient.

• For thickening and bulking at home, whole-food starches — cornstarch, tapioca starch, potato starch — do the same job. They carry the same fast-digestion caveat, so this is a swap of processing, not of blood-sugar effect.
• Resistant maltodextrin is a different ingredient, not a healthier version of the same one: it is a soluble fibre at roughly 2 kilocalories per gram, used where a manufacturer wants fibre rather than fast carbohydrate. Do not treat a product listing it as equivalent to one listing ordinary maltodextrin.
• For drinks, the swap is the category: water and real food for energy, and sports drinks only for long sessions, where fast carbohydrate is genuinely useful rather than decorative.
• For sweetening, the sweetener is rarely the issue — the filler is. A product sweetened with stevia or sucralose still carries maltodextrin bulk; an unsweetened or whole-food version removes both.
• For infant formula, lactose-based formulas where possible: the EU's lactose floor exists precisely because lactose, the carbohydrate in breast milk, is the preferred option.

If the choice is between a product with maltodextrin and the same product without it, the difference is usually the carbohydrate load, not the safety. Read Total Carbohydrate, decide how much fast carbohydrate you want, and let that number — not the "sugar-free" claim on the front — make the decision.

Checked against 21 CFR 184.1444, Hofman et al. 2016, the Johansen 2024 human trials, Regulation (EC) No 1333/2008, Regulation (EU) 2016/127 and the FSANZ Food Standards Code · Last updated 2026-11-12 · How we assess ingredients

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