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Chemists Were Wrong About Splenda

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Re: Chemists Were Wrong About Splenda

#61

Post by drcoopster »

xirdstl wrote: post #12
personjerry wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried aspartame? I've found that Coke Zero tastes much closer to real sugar than Diet Coke.

Diet Coke uses aspartame also. I figured the difference between Coke Zero and Diet Coke was branding for people who don't want to drink something labeled as diet. EDIT: I drink both regularly (including today), and I personally do not perceive difference in taste. YMMV.

Coke Zero uses a combination of aspartame and ace-K. The two have a synergistic effect which results in lower amounts being used and less of the artificial sweetener taste.

Diet Coke (last time I checked) just uses aspartame.

Re: Chemists Were Wrong About Splenda

#62

Post by ajmurmann »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #29
xirdstl wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diet Coke uses aspartame also. I figured the difference between Coke Zero and Diet Coke was branding for people who don't want to drink something labeled as diet. EDIT: I drink both regularly (including today), and I personally do not perceive difference in taste. YMMV.

Zero also has less caffeine.

Thanks for this! This was a huge shocker and I immediately had to go confirm it. Because of the way the branding is, I had assumed that Zero would have more caffeine.

Re: Chemists Were Wrong About Splenda

#63

Post by soundwave106 »

technojunkie wrote: post #14

It's good to see that Splenda isn't the potential toxic substance we began to wonder it was, but I agree that it tastes icky. That said, I wonder why Stevia isn't considered to sweeten drinks? It's very sweet, it's natural like sugar (meaning it's not synthetic or lab-grown), it also has zero calories, and it doesn't taste icky!

Stevia (the plant) naturally has kind of a slight bitter-ish anise aftertaste in the background. Not something I mind personally, but I'm sure others do.

Personally I don't know how much this taste is in the purified compounds themselves. I know many of the early "stevia packets" also exhibited these same sort of characteristics, but it seems to have lessened over time. (Then again, some of this may be due to reformulation. For instance, Truvia switched away from pure stevia-compounds to stevia-compounds-plus-erythritol several years ago if I recall.)

Re: Chemists Were Wrong About Splenda

#64

Post by GregBuchholz »

koolba wrote: post #5

Nice article and I like the matter-of-fact writing style. Makes me want to study more chemistry. Any suggestions from this audience of how to get into it? Pick up a Chemistry 101 text book?

I haven't yet read it, but have been thinking about getting a copy of "Chemistry: a Very Short Introduction" by Peter Atkins

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2015/03/chemistry-very-sho...

Re: Chemists Were Wrong About Splenda

#65

Post by spuz »

technojunkie wrote: post #14

It's good to see that Splenda isn't the potential toxic substance we began to wonder it was, but I agree that it tastes icky. That said, I wonder why Stevia isn't considered to sweeten drinks? It's very sweet, it's natural like sugar (meaning it's not synthetic or lab-grown), it also has zero calories, and it doesn't taste icky!

For what it's worth, stevia drinks still taste icky to me, though they are not as bad as sucralose or aspartame based drinks.

Re: Chemists Were Wrong About Splenda

#66

Post by semi-extrinsic »

technojunkie wrote: post #36
grillvogel wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it's natural like sugar cyanide is also natural

I'm not trying to state its health compared to sugar, just that it's not synthetic

So what's the point of saying it's not synthetic then?

Cyanide is a very good case in point; bitter almonds will kill you in a relatively nasty way (confusion -> vertigo -> seizures -> apnea -> cardiac arrest) if you eat 30-50 of them. At lower doses, chronic exposure causes paralysis, hypothyroidism and liver and kidney damage.

Re: Chemists Were Wrong About Splenda

#67

Post by jasonpbecker »

James001 wrote: post #44
Amezarak wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's natural like sugar, Why is that relevant? That's orthogonal to whether it is healthy or unhealthy. There's no reason, based on that information, that I should expect it to be any more or less toxic than Splenda. I mean, the wrong 100% natural mushroom will kill you pretty dead.

Well that's not true. Saying it's natural suggests that we have atleast evolved with it in the environment, likely interacted with it at times and have developed biological means of interacting and dealing with it. If something is not natural (i.e. doesn't normally exist in nature), then we would not have developed a biological response to it yet, which means it frankly more dangerous because the body does not know h…

Actually, zero calorie stuff is pretty much by definition stuff we haven't decided to "deal with". It doesn't get absorbed directly, and we never created a means to break it down into something that could be absorbed. The goal for a non-caloric sweetener is to be noticed by receptors on the tongue by chance while the rest of your body explicitly ignores it. Biological response is the "problem".

Re: Chemists Were Wrong About Splenda

#68

Post by adwn »

James001 wrote: post #44
Amezarak wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's natural like sugar, Why is that relevant? That's orthogonal to whether it is healthy or unhealthy. There's no reason, based on that information, that I should expect it to be any more or less toxic than Splenda. I mean, the wrong 100% natural mushroom will kill you pretty dead.

Well that's not true. Saying it's natural suggests that we have atleast evolved with it in the environment, likely interacted with it at times and have developed biological means of interacting and dealing with it. If something is not natural (i.e. doesn't normally exist in nature), then we would not have developed a biological response to it yet, which means it frankly more dangerous because the body does not know h…

> Saying it's natural suggests that we have atleast evolved with it in the environment, likely interacted with it at times and have developed biological means of interacting and dealing with it.

The post you replied to has already refuted your argument. We evolved with poisonous mushrooms in our environment and our body's "means of dealing with it" are to die. That's hardly the gold standard for biological responses, don't you think?

Re: Chemists Were Wrong About Splenda

#69

Post by uremog »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #66
technojunkie wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not trying to state its health compared to sugar, just that it's not synthetic

So what's the point of saying it's not synthetic then? Cyanide is a very good case in point; bitter almonds will kill you in a relatively nasty way (confusion -> vertigo -> seizures -> apnea -> cardiac arrest) if you eat 30-50 of them. At lower doses, chronic exposure causes paralysis, hypothyroidism and liver and kidney damage.

Even ground nutmeg is poisonous (in doses of 2+ tbsp)

Re: Chemists Were Wrong About Splenda

#70

Post by DougWebb »

theophrastus wrote: post #50
technojunkie wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not trying to state its health compared to sugar, just that it's not synthetic

Please just be cautious not to fall into the trap of the 'vital principle'[1]. If you had a bottle of L-ascorbic acid ("vitamin C") in your right hand synthesized in a laboratory and a bottle of L-ascorbic acid in your left extracted from rose hips, you'd agree that except for making arguments about impurities (certainly as likely in the 'natural' extract) that the molecules are identical in every sense in both cases…

I've always taken the "natural is better" argument to be based on what else is in the product. The drug industry has a long history of taking a complex natural product and isolating out specific chemicals, then patenting a manufacturing process for those chemicals to sell them as drugs. Sometimes that's fine, but there are many cases where the drugs have side-effects that the natural product doesn't have and that's due to the other stuff in the natural product.

So your analogy really should be between lab-synthesized vitamin C and a piece of citrus fruit. The fruit is going to be better for your overall health because it's got more in it than just L-ascorbic acid. For example, it's got fiber, which is likely to slow down the passage of the vitamin through your digestive system, which will help you absorb more of it for an equal dose.

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