Everything about Sucralose totally explained
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Sucralose is an
artificial sweetener. In the European Union, it's also known under the
E number (additive code)
E955. Sucralose was originally sold under the trade name
Splenda. It is now also supplied by a variety of manufacturers and brands. Sucralose is approximately 600 times as
sweet as
sucrose (table sugar), twice as sweet as
saccharin, and four times as sweet as
aspartame. Unlike
aspartame, it's stable under heat and over a broad range of
pH conditions and can be used in baking or in products that require a longer shelf life. Sucralose also doesn't promote tooth decay. Since its introduction in 1999, sucralose has overtaken
Equal in the $1.5 billion artificial sweetener market, holding a 62% market share. According to market research firm IRI, as reported in the
Wall Street Journal, Splenda sold $212 million in 2006 in the U.S. while Equal sold $48.7 million.
History
Sucralose was discovered in 1976 by scientists from
Tate & Lyle, working with researchers Leslie Hough and Shashikant Phadnis at
Queen Elizabeth College (now part of
King's College London). The duo were trying to test chlorinated sugars as chemical intermediates. On a late-summer day, Phadnis was told to test the powder. Phadnis thought that Hough asked him to
taste it, so he did. He found the compound to be exceptionally sweet (the final formula was 600 times as sweet as sugar). They worked with
Tate & Lyle for a year before settling down on the final formula.
It was first approved for use in
Canada (marketed as Splenda) in 1991. Subsequent approvals came in
Australia in 1993, in
New Zealand in 1996, in the
United States in 1998, and in the
European Union in 2004. As of 2008, it had been approved in over 80 countries, including
Mexico,
Brazil,
China,
India and
Japan.
Tate & Lyle manufactures sucralose at a plant in
McIntosh, Alabama, with additional capacity under construction in
Jurong, Singapore. It is manufactured by the selective chlorination of sucrose, in which three of the
hydroxyl groups are replaced with
chlorine atoms to produce sucralose. An alternative pathway is to selectively chlorinate
raffinose.
It is used in products such as
candy,
breakfast bars and
soft drinks. It is also used in canned fruits wherein water and sucralose take the place of much higher calorie corn syrup based additives. Sucralose mixed with
maltodextrin and
dextrose (both made from corn) as a
filler is sold internationally by
McNeil Nutritionals under the Splenda brand name. In the United States and Canada, this blend is increasingly found in restaurants, including
McDonalds and
Starbucks, in yellow packets, in contrast to the pink packets commonly used by
saccharin sweeteners and the blue packets used by those containing
aspartame; though in Canada yellow packets are also associated with the SugarTwin brand of
cyclamate sweetener.
Packaging and storage
Most products that contain sucralose add fillers and additional sweetener to bring the product to the approximate volume and texture of an equivalent amount of sugar. This is because sucralose is nearly 600 times as sweet as
sucrose (table sugar). Pure sucralose is sold in bulk, but not in quantities suitable for individual use, although some highly concentrated sucralose-water blends are available online, using 1/4 tsp per 1 cup of sweetness or roughly 1 part sucralose to 2 parts water. Pure dry sucralose undergoes some decomposition at elevated temperatures. When it's in solution or blended with
maltodextrin, it's slightly more stable.
Energy (caloric) content
Though marketed in the
U.S. as a “No calorie sweetener,” Splenda actually contains about 86% of the calories as the same mass of
sugar (331 calories per 100 g vs. 387 calories per 100 g for sugar). However, since Splenda is about 14.5% as dense as sugar, a given volume of Splenda has 12.4% the energy of the same volume of sugar. When sucralose is added directly to commercial products, the filler is omitted and no energy is added.
Note
too that although the “nutritional facts” label on Splenda’s retail packaging states that a single serving of 0.5 gram (1 teaspoon or 5 milliliters) contains zero calories, Splenda actually contains 1.66 calories per teaspoon. Note that the individual, tear-open packages are double-size, one-gram servings, which contain 3.31 calories. Such labeling is appropriate in the U.S. because the
FDA’s regulations permit a product to be labeled as “zero calories” if the “food contains less than 5 calories per reference amount customarily consumed and per labeled serving.” Because Splenda contains a relatively small amount of sucralose, little of which is metabolized, virtually all of Splenda’s caloric content derives from the highly fluffed
dextrose or
maltodextrin filler, or carrier, that gives Splenda its volume. Like other
carbohydrates, dextrose and maltodextrin have 3.75 calories per gram.
Use in branded products
Sucralose can be found in more than 4,500 food and beverage products. Sucralose is used as a replacement for, or in combination with, other artificial or natural sweeteners such as
aspartame,
acesulfame potassium or
high-fructose corn syrup.
Sucralose is marketed in India by
Zydus Cadila under the brand name Sugar free Natura and by Hexagon Group under brand name Kal Tame.
Cooking
Sucralose is a highly heat-stable artificial sweetener, allowing it to be used in many recipes without any use of sugar. Sucralose is available in a granulated form that allows for volume-for-volume substitution with sugar. This mix of sucralose and fillers rapidly dissolves in liquids. However, while it provides volume-for-volume sweetness, the texture may be noticeably different.
Some claim that one can offset the caloric load of traditional Southern
sweet tea by substituting Splenda for 1/3 of the usually prescribed sugar ingredient thus adding a 2:1 sugar-sucralose mixture that preserves the integrity of traditional recipes.
Safety
Sucralose has been accepted by several national and international food safety regulatory bodies, including the
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Joint Food and Agriculture Organization/World Health Organization Expert Committee on Food Additives, The European Union's Scientific Committee on Food, Health Protection Branch of Health and Welfare Canada and Food Standards Australia-New Zealand (FSANZ). Sucralose is the only artificial sweetener ranked as "safe" by the consumer advocacy group
Center for Science in the Public Interest. According to the Canadian Diabetes Association, one can consume 15 mg/kg/day of Sucralose "on a daily basis over a ... lifetime without any adverse effects". For a 150 lb person, 15 mg/kg is about 1 g, equivalent to about 75 packets of Splenda or the sweetness of 612 gm or 2500 kcal of sugar.
“In determining the safety of sucralose, the FDA reviewed data from more than 110 studies in humans and animals. Many of the studies were designed to identify possible toxic effects including carcinogenic, reproductive and neurological effects. No such effects were found, and FDA's approval is based on the finding that sucralose is safe for human consumption.” For example, McNeil Nutritional LLC studies submitted as part of its U.S. FDA Food Additive Petition 7A3987, indicated that "in the 2-year rodent
bioassays...there was no evidence of carcinogenic activity for either sucralose or its hydrolysis products...."
After FDA approval, a study published in the
Journal of Head and Face Pain reported sucralose as a possible trigger for migraine patients. Another study published in the
Journal of Mutation Research linked high doses (2 g per kg; equal to 10,000 packets per day for the 150 lb person in the above example) of sucralose to DNA damage in mice.
Concerns have been raised about the effect of sucralose on the
thymus, an organ that's important to the immune system. A report from NICNAS cites two studies on rats, both of which found "a significant decrease in mean thymus weight" at a certain dose. The sucralose dosages which caused the thymus gland effects referenced in the NICNAS report was 3000 mg/kg bw/day for 28 days. For an 80 kg (176 lb) human, this would mean a 28-day intake of 240 grams of sucralose, which is equivalent to more than 20,000 individual Splenda packets/day for approximately one month. The dose required to provoke
any immunological response was 750 mg/kg bw/day, or 60 grams of sucralose per day, which is more than 5,000 Splenda packets/day (there are 11.9 mg of sucralose in a 1g retail packet of Splenda). These and other studies were considered by regulators before concluding that sucralose was safe. However, because some ingested sucralose is broken down and absorbed by the body there's concern that chronic consumption may lead to thymus shrinkage or other side-effects.
There have been anecdotal reports of "allergic" reactions and other adverse reactions to Splenda.
The bulk of sucralose ingested doesn't leave the
gastrointestinal tract and is directly excreted in the feces while 11-27% of it's absorbed. However, measurements by the Swedish Environmental Research Institute have shown that
wastewater treatment has little effect on sucralose, which is present in wastewater effluents at levels of several μg/l. There are no known eco-toxicological effects at such levels, but the
Swedish Environmental Protection Agency warns that there may be a continuous increase in levels if the compound is only slowly degraded in nature.
Splenda usually contains 95% dextrose (the "right-handed" isomer of glucose - see
dextrorotation and
chirality), which the body readily metabolizes. The safety information that many specialists and the media give to consumers is that Splenda is safe to ingest as a diabetic sugar substitute.
Natural alternatives
Critics of sucralose often favor natural alternatives, including
xylitol,
maltitol,
thaumatin,
isomalt and
stevia. However, those substances are - like most artifical sweeteners - partially accused of having other health concerns, and natural products generally don't undergo controlled trials before being allowed in food.
Organochlorides
The basis for concern about the safety of sucralose derives from the class of chemical to which it belongs. The sucralose molecule is an
organochloride (or chlorocarbon). Since some organochlorides are known to cause adverse health effects in extremely small concentrations, critics of sucralose feel the extra-high burden of proof is warranted. Although some chlorocarbons are toxic, sucralose isn't known to be toxic in small quantities and is extremely insoluble in fat; it can not accumulate in fat like chlorinated
hydrocarbons. In addition, sucralose doesn't break down or dechlorinate.
In contrast to these concerns, many organochlorides occur naturally in food sources such as seaweed.
Effect on weight gain
Artificial sweetners including sucralose have been identified as possible factors in raising population obesity levels by making the consumer take up more calories later, because it confuses the brain and body responses about sugary substances and calories - associating sweet foods with fewer calories.
Marketing controversy
In 2006
Merisant, the maker of
Equal, filed suit against
McNeil Nutritionals in federal court in
Philadelphia alleging that Splenda's tagline "Made from sugar, so it tastes like sugar" is false and misleading and Merisant's website calls it an urban myth. McNeil argued during the trial that it had never deceived consumers or set out to deceive them, since the product did in fact start out with sugar. Merisant asked that McNeil be ordered to surrender profits and modify its advertising. The case ended with an agreement reached outside of court, with undisclosed settlement conditions.
The lawsuit was the latest move in a long-simmering dispute. In
2004, Merisant filed a complaint with the
Better Business Bureau regarding McNeil's advertising. McNeil alleged that Merisant's complaint was in retaliation for a ruling in federal court in
Puerto Rico, which forced Merisant to stop packaging Equal in packages resembling Splenda's. McNeil filed suit in Puerto Rico seeking a ruling which would declare its advertising to not be misleading. Following Merisant's lawsuit in Philadelphia, McNeil agreed to a jury trial and to the dismissal of its lawsuit in Puerto Rico.
A Sugar Association complaint to the
Federal Trade Commission points out that "Splenda isn't a natural product. It isn't cultivated or grown and it doesn't occur in nature."
McNeil Nutritionals, the manufacturer of Splenda, has responded that its "advertising represents the products in an accurate and informative manner and complies with applicable advertising rules in the countries where Splenda brand products are marketed." The U.S. Sugar Association has also started a web site where they put forward their criticism of sucralose.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Sucralose'.
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