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You are here: Home / Open Threads / While I am Away

While I am Away

by John Cole|  June 12, 20055:17 pm| 25 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

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How does Splenda work, and why does it taste good without having any calories?

How do cell phones work? I realized the other day I have no idea how my phone knows to ring, and I felt like a confused 8 year old. With a cordless home phone, the land line connects to a specific transmitter. You get the point.

Just curious.

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25Comments

  1. 1.

    Antonio Manetti

    June 12, 2005 at 5:39 pm

    You’ll find a fulsome explanation of cell phone technology at http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/cell-phone.htm

    Antonio

  2. 2.

    Kimmitt

    June 12, 2005 at 5:41 pm

    Splenda is slightly chemically modified sugar, so it causes your sweet taste buds to fire but is indigestible due to its chemical structure.

  3. 3.

    DM

    June 12, 2005 at 6:07 pm

    Anyone ever bought a product with tagatose in it? (It’s the low-cal enantiomer of sugar). Seems like it should be the shit, but you never see anything about it like you do with splenda.

  4. 4.

    Gerard

    June 12, 2005 at 7:07 pm

    Splenda does have calories but only 1/8 the calories of sugar. I believe what the carb counters (and diabetics) love about splenda is that it doesn’t spike your blood-sugar like sugar and other carbs.

  5. 5.

    Zabbadoo

    June 12, 2005 at 7:46 pm

    Splenda shouldn’t be on the market. I won’t go into a lot of details, but, yeah, it’s really really bad for you. And I live on fast food burgers, smokes and Cola, so.. this isn’t some Vegan flakey thing. It’s basically the bastard child of sugar and chlorine.

  6. 6.

    John Cole

    June 12, 2005 at 8:11 pm

    For my sake, could you go into detail?

  7. 7.

    Nathan Lanier

    June 12, 2005 at 8:24 pm

    Dammit, this is my territory. I wish I had more time to write a lengthy response but I’m on my way out.

    But I must say, Splenda is my vice and will be my ultimate demise.

  8. 8.

    Nathan Lanier

    June 12, 2005 at 8:31 pm

    John, concerning being “bad for you”, splenda is an “organochlorine” which is in a family of known carcinogens.

    It’s chrolinated sugar. Three of sugar’s hydroxyl groups are subsituted with chlorine and your left with a undigestible and chemically stable form of sugar.

  9. 9.

    Kimmitt

    June 12, 2005 at 10:57 pm

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splenda

  10. 10.

    KC

    June 13, 2005 at 12:22 am

    Gerard, I’m diabetic and you’re right. Anothe reason why Splenda is big with diabetics is because it can be cooked, like sugar, and still maintain its sweet flavor.

  11. 11.

    gswift

    June 13, 2005 at 5:56 am

    The wikipedia article is pretty good.

    ” splenda is an “organochlorine” which is in a family of known carcinogens.”

    That’s a bit misleading. An organochlorine is any carbon based molecule that also has chlorine. Now while there are well known carcinogens that are organochlorines, that does not mean all organochlorines are carcinogens. Many of the well known organochlorine carcinogens involve chlorinated structures with benzene rings. Take a look at the following structures.

    DDT

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT

    PCB’s

    http://www.uic.edu/sph/glakes/pcb/images/pcb_structure.gif

    Dioxin

    http://userpage.chemie.fu-berlin.de/~tlehmann/krebs/dioxin.gif

    Those hexagons with the alternating double lines (the double lines are double bonds between carbons, double bond meaning the sharing of two electrons instead of one) are structural drawings of benzene rings. Now take a look at the structure of sucralose (Splenda).

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splenda

    Both the six member ring (the glucose unit) and the five member ring (the fructose unit) are sugars. They lack double bonds, there is an oxygen incorporated into the ring, among other things. Sugars are not analagous to benzene.

    I realize that all this might be familiar to some of you, but I’m assuming that most of the readers aren’t chemistry majors.

    With regards to the toxicity of Splenda, so far I’ve not seen much evidence on this front, although I admit I’m not following it that closely. In any case, a Pub Med search done as follows indicates to date there’s not much evidence for Splenda being much of a danger.

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi

    A search on “sucralose and toxicity” pulls 14 results Among them is one that suggests that sucralose damages DNA in gastrointestinal organs, and calls for further study. The general results of tox studies so far however don’t indicate a risk. Several studies involving elevated intake in rats, beagles, and rabbits showed no adverse effects, and a review of the literature in Oct. 2004 concluded

    “according to the current literature, the possible risk of artificial sweeteners to induce cancer seems to be negligible.”

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15367404&query_hl=6

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=10882820&query_hl=6

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=10882818&query_hl=13

  12. 12.

    gswift

    June 13, 2005 at 6:50 am

    Well, a couple clicks into a google search on “splenda carcinogen” and I’m already disgusted.

    If any of you are preparing to make your case against Splenda with articles like the link below, don’t bother.

    http://www.splendaexposed.com/articles/2005/02/weird_science_h.html

    Let’s just dispense with it now.

    Several sites I clicked on featured information from Dr.Janet Starr Hull.

    The article contains such gems as “If the chorine in sucralose breaks free before it is completely excreted from your body, doesn

  13. 13.

    Slartibartfast

    June 13, 2005 at 7:40 am

    Good grief. If chlorine were a carcinogen, every swimmer in the world would be on chemo.

    Not to mention, every resident of Florida that drinks from public water supplies. I’ve tested my tap water for chlorine, and it frequently tops my pool water in chlorine content. We’re all just ticking time bombs here in Florida. On the other hand, it could explain why some of us can’t seem to vote properly.

  14. 14.

    Slartibartfast

    June 13, 2005 at 7:56 am

    Oh, and to underline something gswift said above:

    Chlorine ions don’t just break free to float around in your body. Chlorine is one of the most electronegative elements known to man, which means that when it binds to something, it’s awfully difficult to break that bond; it requires the application of a decent amount of energy. And when it does break loose, it tends to bond with whatever’s closest, so it’s not “floating around” in the sense that it’s available. It’s not a patch on fluorine as an oxidizer, but not much is.

    Now, chlorine pentafluoride, there’s something you want to stay away from.

  15. 15.

    commonchild2

    June 13, 2005 at 8:24 am

    While I do use Splenda and sucralose containing products, I’m amazed that more people aren’t worried about dihydrogen monoxide(DHMO). The govenment freely admits that this chemical DOES kill people every year.

    http://www.dhmo.org/

  16. 16.

    Dave

    June 13, 2005 at 8:51 am

    Not only is DHMO very dangerous, it’s also highly addictive. I got hooked when I was young, and now I ingest over a kilo a day. Luckily, I have a supplier who will bring it to me at home and at work, otherwise, I don’t know what i would do.

  17. 17.

    farmgirl

    June 13, 2005 at 9:43 am

    My co-worker has a diabetic son, so she uses Splenda in baking. From what I understand, she will only substitute it for half the sugar, as 100% Splenda-for-sugar doesn’t bake up quite right.

  18. 18.

    Jaybird

    June 13, 2005 at 10:34 am

    From what I understand about Splenda, it’s a chirality issue.

    Splenda is a mirror image of sugar. So, on your tongue, it tastes like sugar but when it gets to the stuff that breaks it down, it doesn’t act like sugar and gets excreted.

    Or so I have had it explained to me.

  19. 19.

    JPS

    June 13, 2005 at 3:54 pm

    Jaybird,

    Sounds to me like that explanation would work for tagatose, mentioned by DM above. Sucralose does contain chlorine, sucrose doesn’t, so it’s more than a question of chirality.

    gswift: Good stuff! Playing devil’s advocate to you and Slart, though, the fact that chlorine won’t break off as chloride ion doesn’t mean sucralose is OK.

    The more reasonable worry is about radical formation, which can be very easy for certain chlorinated hydrocarbons (Which doesn’t mean it is for all of them!) I think it’s a pretty theoretical worry for sucralose.

    To John: Look at it this way–before the FDA would let the stuff on the markets, a lot of animals were fed truly staggering doses of it, doses that would be toxic even for substances pretty commonly thought harmless. When you read about the testing procedure, the surprise isn’t that some compounds come up dangerous, it’s that anything ever comes up safe.

    It’s not impossible that Splenda may eventually be proven unsafe, but it seems awfully unlikely.

  20. 20.

    JPS

    June 13, 2005 at 4:04 pm

    Oh, Slartibartfast, one more thing:

    “If chlorine were a carcinogen, every swimmer in the world would be on chemo.”

    No, and this is exactly the fallacy that chemophobic environmentalists and health-wackos persist in believing: That if a substance is carcinogenic at some dose, it must be carcinogenic at all doses. You’re just coming at it from the opposite direction: Chlorine is safe in swimming pools (which it is), so it can’t be a carcinogen.

    Anything that makes reactive radicals as readily as chlorine gas does can act as a carcinogen. The thing too few people bear in mind is, the dose makes the carcinogen. Chlorine is harmless at swimming pool concentrations, carcinogenic in higher concentrations, and acutely lethal at 300 ppm.

    (Sorry to be pedantic, but as Vincent says in Collateral, I do this for a living!)

  21. 21.

    Slartibartfast

    June 14, 2005 at 9:08 am

    Playing devil’s advocate to you and Slart, though, the fact that chlorine won’t break off as chloride ion doesn’t mean sucralose is OK.

    I’m certainly not arguing that, am I?

    No, and this is exactly the fallacy that chemophobic environmentalists and health-wackos persist in believing: That if a substance is carcinogenic at some dose, it must be carcinogenic at all doses.

    Oops, I’m not making that argument, either. Just that chlorine in and of itself isn’t carcinogenic. My previous posts pretty much made a point of that chlorine, all by itself, isn’t a carcinogen. Are you saying that’s incorrect?

    Sure, some compounds containing chlorine are carcinogens, just as some compounds containing chlorine aren’t carcinogens. If sucralose is a carcinogen (at some level), fine, say that. Just don’t throw scares into people. For instance, did you know that people routinely and daily ingest a compound composed of a highly reactive, potentially corrosive metal and a highly reactive, corrosive gas? Oh, my GOD! They must be stopped!

  22. 22.

    JPS

    June 14, 2005 at 11:31 am

    Slartibartfast:

    I hate arguing with people I agree with. So, not by way of trying to “win” but by way of (over)explaining myself:

    “I’m certainly not arguing that, am I?”

    Perhaps I misread you. Both you and gswift pointed out that chloride ions don’t just break off of organochlorines like sucralose. What I was pointing out is that in some cases (carbon tetrachloride; chloroform) chlorine can instead be lost as a radical, and both it and the remaining organic radical will wreak havoc on, say, your DNA.

    This is (part of) why perfectly reasonable people consider organochlorines as a class to be “potential carcinogens” and why fools read that sucralose contains C-Cl bonds and immediately conclude, Oh my god! It must cause cancer! I couldn’t agree with you more that throwing scares into people is a bad thing; I was pointing out that your debunking logic, while true, was incomplete.

    “My previous posts pretty much made a point of that chlorine, all by itself, isn’t a carcinogen. Are you saying that’s incorrect?”

    Depends what form we’re talking about, but I was wrong earlier that chlorine gas at some concentration between harmless and outright lethal is a carcinogen. (Sorry–this is what I get for waxing pedantic.) Chloride ion, as you point out, absolutely isn’t. Atomic chlorine, like pretty much any reactive radical, is, but it’s so reactive it’s tricky to generate it. Some organochlorines do, very slowly and at low levels, which is part of why they’re carcinogenic. I was thinking chlorine gas (dichlorine), with its weak Cl-Cl bond, could give rise to Cl

  23. 23.

    Slartibartfast

    June 14, 2005 at 1:06 pm

    Ok, then. In fairness, the concentration bit was possibly a blunder, but I’d bet my beer money that free chlorine isn’t itself a carcinogen, but instead combines with organics to create carcinogens. It’s pretty well documented that bleached paper has a certain concentration of dioxins, I believe, which is a by-product of the bleaching process.

    And I’d bet, say, half of beer money that lethal concentrations of chlorine are lethal because they cause lethal burns to the stomach, skin and/or lung tissue. Not being a doctor or a chemist, though…

  24. 24.

    JPS

    June 14, 2005 at 1:40 pm

    “And I’d bet, say, half of beer money that lethal concentrations of chlorine are lethal because they cause lethal burns to the stomach, skin and/or lung tissue. Not being a doctor or a chemist, though…”

    Yeah, that’s pretty much it. At about 300 ppm of chlorine in the atmosphere, your lungs are getting burned so badly, they fill with fluid in an effort to protect themselves, and you drown.

    (As it happens I am a chemist, but not a biochemist or toxicologist. I know a good bit about how chemicals react with each other, but just a layman’s smattering about how we react to them. So I am not in any way arguing from authority–I have none–and meant, earlier, that I am pedantic for a living.)

  25. 25.

    DWB

    September 16, 2005 at 4:04 pm

    When it comes to evaluating “scientific” information you read on the web, remember that a real scientist will provide you with references that will back up their scientific facts. Just stating a fact doesn’t make it a fact. And if that “scientist” is trying to help people because they lived through a horrible illness, why are they selling various books and products? Or course, I’m refering to Janet Starr Hull, who I deem to be the worst of humans. Don’t tell me you’ve personally uncovered deadly secrets and then charge to read about them, test my health using your products, and all will be well…, right???

    Whatever the scientfic facts about aspartame and splenda turn out to be, it doesn’t take a phd in chemistry to figure out the truth about Janet Starr Hull.

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