Sugar Substitute Splenda Dominates Market, Now Targets the Home Baker

[CShine]

It's hard to give up chocolate-chip cookies and apple cobbler when you have a sweet tooth. But leave it to science to find a way.
Sugar replacements have existed for decades, sweetening everything from black coffee to baked goods. But some leave an aftertaste. Most don't hold up well when used for baking.

Then came Splenda, which hit U.S. supermarket shelves in 2000 at a time when Americans were concerned about their health and dieting was on the rise. Splenda, brand name for the substitute sweetener sucralose, is the only no-calorie substitute made from sugar. It's quickly become the hottest sugar replacement on the market, appealing to low-carb followers with its sugar-like taste, but without the calories or carbohydrates.

Now Splenda is making inroads into the mainstream food market, popping up in more than 3,500 products worldwide from ice cream to sodas. And it's aiming for more: Coming this summer is a baking product that is part sugar, part sucralose.

"Splenda is enjoying at the moment a huge honeymoon period," said Dean Rotbart, executive editor of LowCarbiz, a Denver-based weekly online trade newsletter.

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBXD57VTVD.html

[americanstranger]

1. Is this really LBN material?

I come here for world news, not Splenda ads.

My wife looked at the threads from yesterday and said 'The mods must have taken the day off. How is a post about low-carb diets considered late breaking news?'

Nothing against you personally, but i think a lot of these posts would be better in General discussion.

-as

[revree]

11. Hey, this is news for those of us trying to get healthy!!!

Can't be powerful progressives unless we have our health.

[americanstranger]

14. Good point.

I'll say no more. It isn't all about me, anyway. :)

-as

[Judi Lynn]

26. I share your belief, a.s.

The ONLY reason I came to D.U. was because of its direct focus on Democratic issues and Democratic/Republican political information in depth, if possible.

[Dover]

2. So is Splenda better for people than Sweet & Low or Equal?

Otherwise, I don't understand the appeal of Splenda over the others.

[dsc]

37. You can't bake at all with nutrasweet

and saccarin doesn't bake well. The texture and volume are all wrong.

[democrat in Tallahassee]

3. I have fibromyalgia and both splenda and nutrasweet cause

muscle spasms. I contacted a group doing research on splenda and they told me that a lot of people have this problem and that it really doesn't take much of the stuff to affect you if you have sensitivity to it.

[Dogmudgeon]

10. My own anecdote doesn't match it

I was an "early adapter" of Splenda, use a fair amount of it, and I've never had a problem with it.

And I literally have hundreds of fibromyalgic pressure points.

This isn't just to knock what they're doing; I would be interested in seeing the results of their studies. But I've personally found FM and those similar mystery diseases to be very "flexible" as to activation. It's almost as if the triggers are individualized much the same way the protective protein coat around HIV is.

--bkl

[Trillo]

4. The following interview was conducted with Dr. Janet Starr Hull

on the safety of sucralose found in Splenda.
Q: What exactly is Splenda?
A: In a simple sentence, you would just as soon have a pesticide in your food as sucralose because sucralose (Splenda) is a chlorocarbon. The chlorocarbons have long been known for causing organ, genetic, and reproductive damage. It should be no surprise, therefore, that the testing of sucralose reveals that it can cause up to 40 percent shrinkage of the thymus: a gland that is the very foundation of our immune system. Sucralose also causes swelling of the liver and kidneys, and CALCIFICATION of the kidney. Note: if you experience kidney pain, cramping, or an irritated bladder after using sucralose in Splenda, stop use immediately.
http://www.mercola.com/fcgi/pf/2004/jan/10/splenda_questions.htm

***

Personally, I know someone who developed severe gastrointestinal distress and headaches while taking a supplement sweetened with sucralose. Once the connection was made in this person's mind between taking the supplement and initiation of the symptoms, discontinuing the supplement relieved the symptoms.

It's really hard these days to find diet foods that don't include it.

[notadmblnd]

9. Sounds to me that it's very similar to

anti-freeze:shrug:

[Dogmudgeon]

15. This is ridiculous!

I'm supportive of alternative medicine, but Dr. Mercola's position on Splenda is useless and probably unethical. He only cites one source of information that can be checked, and it's appearantly one of his own companies! All the "scientific studies" he talks about are unreferenced; the lists of disorders supposedly caused by Splenda are unattributed; the only clear attributions are from people who write to him to tell him they are sick and they are sure it was the fault of Splenda. And the information he gave on Chlorine and on Sucralose's chemistry were both misleading. For one thing, he seems completely ignorant that the human body processes several ounces of chlorine per day with no ill effects (as hydrochloric acid and "radical" chlorine from breaking down salt).

People should eat, or not eat, according to what makes them feel healthy or sick. If Splenda makes you sick, don't eat it. But I have a lot of trouble believing people who tell me that this, that, or some other thing is a universal poison -- and back it up with intellectually dishonest methods.

--bkl

[trotsky]

19. Thanks for this, bkl.

Too much kneejerk paranoia when it comes to things like sugar substitutes. Supposedly now it turns out that saccharin didn't cause cancer in the first place - go figure. I am not a huge artificial sweetener fan (or user) but the richness and convenience they can bring to the lives of diabetics and other people on restricted diets is very important.

(I remember reading an early critique of Splenda - maybe it was this same Mercola - and laughing at the "chlorine is a poison!" silliness.)

[Trillo]

25. Ah, yes, the scientific ridicule of my posts continues,

and from a forum moderator at that.

It is ridiculous that a synthetic agent can receive FDA approval when there are a few individuals who are extremely sensitive to it. What happens if those individuals that experience extreme headache and gastrointestinal distress DON'T stop taking it? Do they die?

It is absurd that Ephedra is withdrawn from the market because of a sensitivity of a few individuals, but that a mega-corporation can modify a compound with a 3 chlorine atoms, one that some individuals, but not apparently all have severe reactions to.

Must be the campaign contributions. No big deal if a few people get cancer or something else from long-term treatment, after all, they'll get treated ($$$) for that developed disease and it's just another corporate cash cow.

Ever hear of chlorine gas?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=chlorine+poison&spell=1

Here's the chemical composition of Splenda:
http://sci-toys.com/ingredients/sucralose.html
Note the three chlorine atoms?

Ethylene glycol (EG) has the chemical formula CH2(OH)CH2(OH) (MW = 62).
http://www.gewater.com/library/tp/821_Glycol_Applications.jsp
No Chlorine.


In my view, the FDA and USDA has lost much of my respect to tell us what is safe for us. Remember, the USDA is against 100% testing for mad cow disease. How many drugs has the FDA given us that have later been proven as unsafe?

Wern't they also involved in the Tuskagee experiments. Or was that their forerunner or cousin agency, the U.S. Public Health Service? Where's the integrity?

[Dogmudgeon]

28. I'm NOT ridiculing your post at all

I'm irked at Dr. Mercola's playing fast and loose with public health issues to get hits on his website.

Incidentally, when I post in public forums, I have to play by the same rules as everybody else. No exceptions are made. None. If you have any remaining suspicions, by all means, ask Skinner, Elad, or EarlG in Ask The Administrators. The fact is, if I break the rules enough, they'll bounce me as fast as they'd bounce a Freeper and won't shed a tear doing so -- nor should they.

Your point about certain people being sensitive to Splenda has merit, but it loses its persuasiveness when it's evaluated along with more mundane chemical sensitivities. There are people who have actually died from smelling a few peanuts, but peanuts and peanut products remain on the market. People who are sensitive usually exercise caution -- they don't call on the FDA to ban the substance to which they are sensitive unless the sensitivity affects a large number of people. And Splenda sensitivity does not. The FDA has an Adverse Effects reporting system that all physicians are required to use. Several hundred products have been pulled from the market over the past decade alone because of adverse side effects. Splenda has not been associated with many reports at all. (See http://www.fda.gov/cber/recalls.htm , http://www.fda.gov/cber/index.html and http://www.foodsafety.gov/~dms/fs-toc.html)

I'm quite aware of the dangers involved with halogenated organic compounds, and the existence of chlorine in various substances. Ethylene Glycol, free of chlorine, is far more toxic than Splenda. As for Chlorine gas, yes, its dangers are well known. It's almost as dangerous as Oxygen gas, and yet under the proper conditions, Oxygen is completely benign. It's not the "chemical", it's how the compound works. There are literally thousands of examples where a minor change in a molecule can turn it from a foodstuff into a deadly poison, something that would kill you much faster than using Splenda in your coffee.

Incidentally, sucrose and similar sugars are deadly cytotoxins. They depend on Insulin to transport them safely into the cells they nourish. Similarly, phorphorous compounds like ATP (adenosine triphosphate) allow deadly combustion-causing Oxygen to be used by the body without toxic effects.

Today's FDA and the US Public Health Service can not be compared with the group of people who ran the Tuskeegee experiments. It's like saying that because the USA once allowed slavery, that the Post Office is currently running white slaves to Europe and Asia.

I don't trust the government uncritically, but people like Joseph Mercola operate entirely on the basis of scaring people into changing their lives based on nothing more than "It's chemicals! The FDA is bad!". YOU try to search for his source material -- it isn't there. Someone like Andrew Weil at least documents what he says, and a number of alternative healers actually do conduct experiments to check on whether they're on to something real. Mercola does none of that, except for a link to a quasi-professional sister site!

As I've written before, make your own mind up and stay informed. But Mercola is utterly without credibility, and he has no one to blame for it but himself. You can't expect anyone who makes it a habit to check out the statements of "experts" to believe him at all. The day he starts citing other scientists and public health workers, backing up his assertions with hard data, and looking at the situation as a whole, is the day he comes off my "unhelpful" list.

I don't accept unsupported assertion from physicians, from Skeptics, from the government, from holistic healers, or from anybody else. I'm sorry if you think that's a form of ridicule, but I consider it an essential practice to question anyone who is telling me what is good for me. You ask "where's the integrity?" -- where there is a dollar to be made, I assume there is no integrity whatsoever, whether the dollar is chased by alternative healers, the company that produces Splenda, or by anyone else.

--bkl

[Trillo]

31. Just calling it the way I saw it--No harm, no foul.

You're certainly welcome to reply, and you did so. That's what freedom of speech is all about. I did differentiate between criticism of the Dr.'s advice that I posted from a personal attack, and did not alert. But perhaps I'm sensitive to the issue now that I've experienced you-know-what in The Meeting Room.

I've wondered about Splenda's approval, given the criticism of that particular person. It's posted all over the Internet on other sites as well.

When a loved one developed what for us was a rather acute and severe reaction to it, I can't help but wonder if she had continued taking it if the end result would have been 6 feet under. She was very ill, but didn't want to go to the hospital. That tended to validate the danger of Splenda for us, and now we both avoid it like the plague, and are amazed at the number of products it is an ingredient in. Thank god for labeling.

In point of fact, this was the first time I had heard of Splenda--when it made her ill. It is not easy to find documentation elsewhere on the Internet at either edu or gov sites of the dangers of Splenda, and that *lack of information*, when we well know that it's dangerous, I find curious.

I get really pissed when the government removes a herbal supplement when there's *any danger* to *any individual* whatsoever, but allows products that have passed testing that are in fact dangerous. They certainly haven't removed all the oleander from freeways in California. Peanuts, as you pointed out, haven't been removed, either.

At least peanut allergy information is to be found.

What was the name of the recent anti-depressant that was pulled because of suicides and the pharmaco had doctored the test results to the FDA? Remember, these are scientists with an axe to grind--their paychecks, and perhaps their overblown egos.

I also agree with you that some of the "health related" sites can be simply selling their own religion, as well.

[Lindacooks]

23. Yep, that's what I learned in Food Science courses

Aspartame was widely criticized by food scientists in the late 1970s, and many predicted that it would never make it to the public because there were too many problems with it and not enough research, especially long-term studies. And then that asshole Reagan got into office, decimated the FDA, and gee, what do you know? Aspartame was on grocer's shelves. I will NEVER eat any type of artificial sweetener, EVER.

[kysrsoze]

36. Sounds pretty scary. Nutrasweet is also very bad for you - very bad

I was listening to a radio show in which a doctor was talking about all the bad stuff about Nutrasweet. It's been known to cause headaches, stomach problems, weight gain and possibly tumors. Further, when it is heated (s/a in coffee or hot chocolate), the stuff breaks down into formaldehyde - I'm NOT kidding. It turns out the approval process by the FDA was evidently compromised by greased palms.

I'd like to go back to Saccharin. It turns out that those well-known cancer tests on it proved nothing. Saccharin is (believe it or not) petroleum-based and cannot be absorbed into your body. Additionally, the rats which got cancer from it were injected with the human equivalent of 800 bottles of pop per day. Lab rats are also notoriously susceptible to getting cancer from just about anything introduced into their bodies. I'll take less of real sugar or saccharin any day.

[R Hickey]

5. Once everybody starts eating it, we'll probably find out it causes cancer

The only substitute for sucrose that I'll eat us fructose. I think the Atkins diet will soon be out of fashion.

[tkmorris]

8. You have a point but

Splenda has other uses besides being allowed in the Atkins diet. It is a wonderful substitute for sugar for diabetics.

[whistle]

6. Nada, nothing at all in the article about resaerch findings....

...looks like the standard PR press release from the Splenda folks. I don't trust any corporate claims that can't be backed up with real science. If sugar has somehow been altered so that it can't be absorbed by the body, I think it should not be sold to the public without controls, until it is proven to be totally safe through real science.

[elfin]

7. I love Splenda

It has no aftertaste for me - discovered it two years ago and am pleased it is more available. restaurants still don't have it, so I carry my own for iced tea or coffee.

Not just for Atkins - but it sure helps. Make my sweet and sour cukes, broccoli salad etc. with it. Don't bake, but will try the new stuff when it appears.

Owned by Johnson and Johnson, so I think it has been tested more than if it were a product of some fly by night.

[tridim]

12. How about this?

Bake some cookies with real sugar and instead of eating a dozen in one sitting like most people do, eat 1 or 2 instead. Savor them, take the time to actually enjoy eating them in moderation. Wait 24 hours and repeat.

[jpgray]

42. Shush. People want to gorge themselves on tasty food and be healthy too

In other words, they want a button they can just press to make them perfect without their having to change or work in any way. The American Dream lives on. :(

[TlalocW]

13. My only problem with Splenda

Is that you can't carmelize it like sugar. I have a recipe that calls for carmelizing a cup and third! of sugar so I was hoping to Splenda-ize it. I guess since they juggle the molecular form of sugar to get Splenda, it doesn't break down the same way. Anyway, it let out toxic-like fumes, and I had to throw out the pot I was using. :)

If any of you good cooks out there have a suggestion on how to carmelize it, I'd appreciate it.

TlalocW

[Eloriel]

17. Toxic fumes? And you still continue to eat the stuff?

Amazing.

[TlalocW]

20. Toxic-like fumes

They made me cough and my eyes water, and I needed to air out my kitchen afterwards. However, I've cooked other "normal" things that did the same thing because I didn't know what I was doing.

I've ruined plenty of pans and pots with my weak cooking skills.

TlalocW

[Mechatanketra]

27. Uh, yeah.

Most of the food in my kitchen will release toxic fumes if I leave it on the fire too long. They're called "smoke". :-)

[MattBaggins]

33. I can't imagine what you were doing wrong

I have caramelized splenda many times with complete sucess. I never
had any toxic gasses or strange odors. Just grab some butter and splenda, and caramelize as normal.

[TlalocW]

40. It was the lack of butter I guess

I've never had to use it for sugar so I figured why would splenda be any different? How much butter would you use for 1 1/3 cups of Splenda?

TlalocW

[Wednesdays]

16. I can't take Splenda

Even a miniscule amount gives me the runs. :(

[Tatiana]

18. That's one of the adverse effects of splenda :( n/t

[Cronus Protagonist]

21. But did you have a Splenda bowel movement?

I'm sensing some new markets here....

ANYBODY BUT BUSH

Click here for "ANYBODY BUT BUSH", and other fair and balanced yet stunning buttons, magnets and stickers

[nolabels]

32. Damn, I have the problem with *

Every time I see that mug I need run and scream for people to get out of the way, it's just terrible



http://irregulartimes.com/exprogressive.html

[KittyWampus]

22. For Those Looking For Sugar Variants

that metabolize in a more balanced way than white sugar... may I suggest barley malt, rice syrup, date or prune puree and fruit
juices.

I learned how to make the most delicious sweets using these sweeteners while doing macrobiotics.

Boy, once you wean yourself from white sugar... you won't be able to eat even a little of it.

It's chemically and so freaking sweet your teeth will scream.

If anyone wants some recommedations for Natural Desserts, say the word and I'll post the titles. :)

[progressivebydesign]

35. Yes.. natural desserts, please!

I'm an avid baker.. I would LOVE to find ways to make things without a dependence on white sugar. :)

[myahquote]

24. tagatose a new sweetener

Tagatose tagatose.com is also a new sweetener that is sugar but somehow its a "left handed version of the right hand" sugar molecule which then doesn't increase insulin levels or get absorbed (ie. calories) or decay teeth. It browns and has probiotic (sp?)properties and supposidly is all natural.

Most say it avoids some of the problems with some of these other artificial sweeteners. Its made from Milk Whey and is currently in Diet Pepsi Slurpees at 7-11 (splenda alone doesn't allow the proper freezing) and its combined with Splenda in Walmart's (ugh) GV light OJ.

patent holder is smaller Spherix (spex though the stock is very risky) and distribution through a european company (Arla) so who knows if it will ever get widespread acceptance.

We eat to much sugar. Not sure if creating substitutes is the way to go , but its tough to avoid sugar.

[Mechatanketra]

29. Yup. Tough to avoid sugar.

You often hear people make snide comments about people who eat unhealthily being "too lazy" or some such. But in a way, correcting your diet can be a lot harder than, say, quitting smoking, because you can't quit food cold turkey. And your body doesn't 'know' that it's "civilized" now -- no matter how we develop culturally, our cells still think we're rummaging around the wilderness hoping to find something edible day by day. From a eat-as-you-find-it perspective, sugary and fatty foods are major plusses, so we're 'wired' to eat as much of them as we can find -- problem being, in modern society, you can generally find as much of them as you can eat ...

I dunno. I've been using Splenda myself for a few months, and I haven't noticed any ill effects healthwise; on the other hand, it just doesn't seem as robust as sugar (or aspertame, for that matter) -- it's not as sweet the day after I make something as it is when I first mixed it up.

[MattBaggins]

38. Tagatose is not the L-enantiomer of sucrose

That is, it is not the "left handed version" of normal table sugar. It is a rare sugar naturally occuring in milk . It is closest to fructose in structure and like almost all simple sugars, it is D-tagatose the "right handed version".

[KansDem]

30. Have you tried stevia?

As a recently diagnosed diabetic, I've been looking for "sugar substitutes." I found stevia in my local organic food store and have only now begun to try it out in recipes.

"Stevia...safe for diabetics"
http://www.holisticmed.com/sweet/

"If you've ever tasted stevia, you know it's extremely sweet. In fact, this remarkable noncaloric herb, native to Paraguay, has been used as a sweetener and flavor enhancer for centuries. But this innocuous-looking plant has also been a focal point of intrigue in the United States in recent years because of actions by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration."
http://www.stevia.net/

[silverweb]

34. Yes.

I've been using stevia for some time now. I'd not tried it for quite a while because I'd heard it had a licorice-like aftertaste -- and I don't care for licorice. However, the packets of stevia that I buy have absolutely no aftertaste that I can detect.

Additionally, I read research that shows stevia has a mildly diuretic, antihypertensive effect, which is good for those of us watching our blood pressure -- especially during this administration! :)

No wonder the makers of Sweet'n Low and Equal managed for years to ban stevia in the United States!

[amazona]

39. I'm not happy with it

I still have the same very expensive bottle of Stevia I bought years ago, heck, maybe five years ago. It tastes weedy or something. Probably it's bad now anyway.

[stickdog]

41. Stevia is great. But get high quality stevia, not Chinese crap.

http://www.practicalhippie.com/cache/stevia/manyben.htm

Prior to 1991, stevia was in widespread use in the United States and several other countries. In Japan, it was developed by a complex refining process into a sweetener called stevioside -- a white powder 250 to 300 times sweeter than sugar -- which has a 47 percent market share in the Japanese commercial-sweetening industry.

In 1984, stevia importers were informed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that they could no longer import concentrated stevia liquid into the United States for sale as a sweetener. FDA officials did say that there was no problem with importing stevia in tea bags for sale as a tea. The FDA imposed an import alert on stevia in May 1991, instructing importation agents to not allow stevia in any form into the United States. The agency later relaxed that order, allowing stevia to be imported and sold only as a liquid concentrate for skin care. The FDA issued a revised import alert Sept. 18, 1995, informing its agents that stevia could be imported and sold if, and only if, it was labeled as a dietary supplement.

Good quality stevia leaves, whether whole, cut and sifted or in tea bags, are about 30 times sweeter than sugar and have no calories. The best quality leaves are imported from South America and Mexico, and are about 12 percent to 13 percent stevioside. The poorest quality, but most ample supply, is currently coming from China, where the leaves contain only 5 percent to 6 percent stevioside. A simple taste test quickly demonstrates the difference.

A few companies are marketing liquid stevia extracts or concentrates. The water-based concentrates are superior to the alcohol-based extracts because they usually contain a greater concentration of the nutrients essential to the healing activity. Virtually all research performed with whole-leaf stevia has been done with water-based concentrates. Also, alcohol nullifies much of the plant's healing activity on the skin and the scalp. The effectiveness of a water-based concentrate depends on its purity and the ratio of leaves to water used in the preparation process. The more leaves to water, the better and more effective the final product.

In all of its current forms, stevia has a taste unique to itself. With all of its sweetness, there is a bitter taste when the leaf, extract or stevioside powder is placed in the mouth. This bitter taste disappears, as does the slight licorice flavor, when the product is appropriately diluted in water or another liquid prior to use. The bitter taste comes from the leaf veins. The majority of the veins must be removed during the cut-and-sift process, or the delightfully sweet taste is overcome by a strong bitterness.


This brand is pretty good:

http://www.stevitastevia.com/Products/products.html

Cooking with stevia:

http://www.cookingwithstevia.com/