# "Left-handed" sugar **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 13, 2003, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-handed-sugar/201462 "2003-09-13T23:30:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Roches](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bc8723/32.png) [@Roches](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roches)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2003, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-handed-sugar/201462/21 "2003-09-14T04:32:25Z")
I’m really happy someone brought up sucralose. =) Splenda™ is made from sugar…and **chlorine**. Basically, sucralose is a derivative of sucrose where three of the -OH groups have been replaced by chlorine. This makes it impossible to metabolize. Much of it passes unabsorbed through the intestines; the rest is excreted by the kidneys. You can see the structure of sucralose [here](http://www.finchcms.edu/cms/biochem/walters/sweet/sucralose.html). ---
**Author:** ![mangeorge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d78d45/32.png) [@mangeorge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mangeorge)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2003, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-handed-sugar/201462/22 "2003-09-14T04:58:55Z")
Isn’t “passes unabsorbed through the intestines” generally preferable to “excreted by the kidneys”? A marble (or a balloon of heroin) can pass benignly through the intestine. ---
**Author:** ![Roches](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bc8723/32.png) [@Roches](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roches)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2003, 7:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-handed-sugar/201462/23 "2003-09-14T07:06:45Z")
Yes, though it’s not always all that benign. (Think Olestra; think “anal leakage”.) I suppose that sucralose resembles natural sucrose enough to be absorbed into the bloodstream, though. The absorbed sucralose would probably be excreted unchanged, since it cannot be metabolized. This reminds me of the urban legend about a professor who, demonstrating that diabetes can be diagnosed by tasting the urine of a diabetic, dips his finger into a glass of urine, then licks the same finger… on his other hand…ha, ha. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2003, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-handed-sugar/201462/24 "2003-09-14T18:38:22Z")
Original poster here. Thanks for all of the responses. I think L-glucose is what I heard of originally and the production cost seems to be the big stumbling block to widespread usage. So would it be possible to geneticallly engineer beets or sugar cane to produce it? ---
**Author:** ![yabob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yabob/32/2821_2.png) [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2003, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-handed-sugar/201462/25 "2003-09-14T19:11:15Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by SMTWTFS \* > \*\*Original poster here. Thanks for all of the responses. > > I think L-glucose is what I heard of originally and the production cost seems to be the big stumbling block to widespread usage. So would it be possible to geneticallly engineer beets or sugar cane to produce it? \*\* If Spherix’s claims for tagatose are anywhere near correct, what economic reason would you have for such a program? (note that they started out trying to synthesize left hand sugars economically). BTW, if you think they are likely to have a significant hit with this product, they trade under the NASDAQ symbol SPEX. No, I don’t own any shares, but I’m looking them over. ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2003, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-handed-sugar/201462/26 "2003-09-14T19:13:27Z")
Yeah, but the problem with olestra is that they didn’t make the fatty chains long enough. It was solid enough at room temperature, but liquifed at body temperature. All they had to do was to add some more carbons to the chains. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2003, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-handed-sugar/201462/27 "2003-09-14T19:51:52Z")
Tagatose does sound cool. I’m looking forward to being able to buy it in the supermarket or at least buy products containing it. ---
**Author:** ![SirRay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cc9497/32.png) [@SirRay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SirRay)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2003, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-handed-sugar/201462/28 "2003-10-24T14:48:56Z")
Bumping this thread, as I just read a interesting article on [Wired.com](http://Wired.com) about this (first time I really heard of tagatose - I did a search for this thread). The article summaries everything posted before in this thread, including some ‘amazing’ benefits (if true, a 4 soda a day habit will be better than any apple, and Little Debbie snackcakes will be standard post-op prescription) - well, the benefit to me would be in effect ‘sugar free’, low calories sodas that taste just like regular without the bitter aftertaste (and things like cancer reduction, diabetes prevention, anemia treatment, and increased fertility[!] sound a bit too much to be true). Too bad no one did anything with this 20 years ago (from the article, it seems the knowledge was around then, and perhaps the technology too). [Wired Article on tagatose and it’s discoverer, Gilbert Levin](http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.11/newsugar.html?tw=wn_tophead_3) NB: Has anyone around here tried the slurpees (or anything else with tagatose), and can render an opinion… ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2003, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-handed-sugar/201462/29 "2003-10-24T15:28:42Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by mangeorge \* > \*\*Trouble is, these other substitutes don’t act like sugar. Try making a caramel sauce (ie sticky buns) with Equal. They even suffer a little in hot coffee. I don’t use much sweetner, so I’d be willing to pay more for a true substitute. > Next: Left handed pasta. \*\* Splenda is marketed in bulk quantities that are substituted spoonful for spoonful for regular sugar. Not a surprise since it basically is real sugar. From what I’ve read tagatose will work this way as well, since it is also a true monosaccharide. The supersweet substitutes may be a problem in baking, but the real sugar derivatives shouldn’t be. ---
**Author:** ![yabob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yabob/32/2821_2.png) [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2003, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-handed-sugar/201462/30 "2003-10-24T15:50:21Z")
BTW, the 7-Eleven slurpees are actually sweetened with a combination of three artificial sweeteners, not just tag. One of the other three is sucralose (see above). Tag was required so that they could get the “slurpee” consistency, aided by the fact that tagatose is actually sugar, and behaves like it in solution. Even so, they seem to have problems with them freezing up. I would guess that they used just enough tag to get the sugar behaviour, and sweetened to the desired level with artificial sweeteners which were cheaper or more available. That wired article is good, including the background on Gilbert Levin and Spherix. “A career of near misses” seems to be a good description, and if you do research on SPEX, you come up against the unsettling fact that they and Arla Foods are suing each other over their contract. Arla is a very large European dairy company which bought the rights to manufacture tagatose from Spherix, and is currently the producer you have to buy the stuff from (the Spherix process extracts it from whey, hence a dairy company). BTW, a note on Splenda: The actual sucralose molecule is 600 times sweeter than sugar. The packaging format for Splenda which substitutes 1 for 1 with sugar cuts it with a filler, like other artificial sweetener products intended to be used that way. One of the reasons tagatose is interesting is that it really does match up 1-1 with normal sugar (well, 1 to 0.92). You’ll get the physical properties of sugar, not the filler. ---
**Author:** ![Truth\_Seeker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/5fc32e/32.png) [@Truth\_Seeker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Truth_Seeker)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2003, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-handed-sugar/201462/31 "2003-10-24T16:05:55Z")
> [@](#): > > \*\*The supersweet substitutes may be a problem in baking, but the real sugar derivatives shouldn’t be. \*\* Sucralose/Splenda is sort of both. While it is a sugar derivative, it’s also much sweeter than normal sugar and also has filler. It has problems when used in bulk. Since it is so much sweeter than sugar, the actual quantity used is much less. To make it measure “cup for cup” or spoon for spoon like ordinary sugar, they sort of puff it up with air so it has a lot of volume but very little mass. This means that the correct level of sweetness is achieved but it doesn’t duplicate sugar’s mechanical properties. It is heat stable so you can bake with it but many things don’t come out quite right. You can’t, for example, really carmelize Splenda. Recipes that call for a lot of sugar don’t come out with the same texture, baking times must be adjusted etc. This tagatose stuff has its own problems. From a company press release. > [@](#): > > \*\*Like several other sugar substitutes, tagatose is partly absorbed in the small intestine; some of it breaks down in the large intestine. > > In large amounts, it can cause bloating, gas, nausea and diarrhea. But at the doses most people might consume in a day, tagatose shouldn’t cause a big problem, Kahl said. \*\* Something tells me you won’t be seeing tagatose-coated donuts fried up in Olestra. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-handed-sugar/201462.md?page=1)