# What's the deal with Sucralose? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** food-cooking\ **Created:** [December 10, 2020, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-sucralose/927773 "2020-12-10T16:03:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![WolfpackJeep](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpackjeep/32/2921_2.png) [@WolfpackJeep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WolfpackJeep)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2020, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-sucralose/927773/21 "2020-12-10T19:04:07Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > The intersection of Cucumber&Vine is cute, though. They actually succeeded in getting the town of Mt. Olive to rename the streets in question. The actual intersection is on company property though, so I think it’s more of a private street situation. If the “why” is regarding the “no sugar added” line – I’m pretty sure this is aimed at consumers who want or need to cut sugar from their diets, but still want meals that have a sweet ingredient. Think of someone ordering an unsweetened iced tea, then pouring in packet after packet of Sweet’n’Low…it’s not anything like real sweet tea, but it might come close enough to be satisfying. If the “why” is regarding sucralose – I haven’t heard of sucralose causing unpleasant side effects like sugar alcohols (remember the sugar-free gummy bears?), which may explain its popularity in foods and beverages now. I’ve managed to avoid it, so I can’t speak to its taste, but I don’t doubt that some people find it unpleasant. In my case, Stevia – even in tiny amounts – has a bitter chemical taste to me. ---
**Author:** ![erysichthon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d07c76/32.png) [@erysichthon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erysichthon)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2020, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-sucralose/927773/22 "2020-12-10T19:05:27Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > I am bizarro you. Like sucralose (for a very broad definition of “like” - it’s my least offensive artificial sweetener), utterly despise saccharin. Like to the point I used to wonder why anyone still manufactured the vile stuff when superior fake sugars had been invented. Same here. ---
**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:** [December 10, 2020, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-sucralose/927773/23 "2020-12-10T19:06:34Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > > [@Edward\_The\_Head](#): > > > > None actually, but I’ve seen things like apple sauce and the like say no sugar added, and to me that means that any sugars would be natural. But any more I’ve only seen it to mean they add a bunch of artificial sweeteners. > > Sure, but apples are naturally sweet. That’s why you can sell a product full of apple juice and claim “no sugar added”. BTW, I googled. Cucumber contains 1.7g of sugar per 100g, while apple contains 10g of sugar per 100g. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2020, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-sucralose/927773/24 "2020-12-10T19:30:55Z")
> [@Edward\_The\_Head](#): > > None actually, but I’ve seen things like apple sauce and the like say no sugar added, and to me that means that any sugars would be natural If there are no artificial sweeteners, it typically means the product is significantly less sweet. We’ve gotten so use to added sugar that unsweetened food tastes quite plain to most folks. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2020, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-sucralose/927773/25 "2020-12-10T19:39:50Z")
That “Splenda” logo was the same size, _and right next to_, the “Cucumber and Vine” picture you mentioned. ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2020, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-sucralose/927773/26 "2020-12-10T20:05:46Z")
What’s strange is Canada banned saccharin and the US did not . US banned cyclamates but Canada did not. ---
**Author:** ![Omniscient](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omniscient/32/3290_2.png) [@Omniscient](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omniscient)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2020, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-sucralose/927773/27 "2020-12-10T20:28:57Z")
This is a weird thread. Seems like everyone missed their coffee this morning or something. Anyways, artificial sweeteners are weird as has been covered. But the idiot who had the idea to make Sweet Pickles with artificial sweeteners needs to be smacked in the head. Vlasic makes a version of this too, and like the OP I bought it by mistake. The original packaging for it was almost indistinguishable from the normal version so I’m guessing a lot of people had a unhappy surprise. They’ve since changed it to be slightly more distinct much like the Mt Olive photo above, except pink. While artificial sweeteners have their place in food where having a touch of sweetness is needed and you want to keep calories down makes sense. For a food like pickles, where the base ingredient is essentially flavorless…making a artificially sweetened version is a really bad idea. It’s like you’re eating concentrated and distilled artificial sweetener that you have to chew. Bad times. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2020, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-sucralose/927773/28 "2020-12-10T20:33:42Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > As for sucralose, I don’t like it on its own, but combined with Ace K – I dunno what it is – but the Ace K takes that weird greasy kind of aftertaste/feeling on the back of my tongue or something I get with Splenda on its own. Ace K is shorthand for “acesulfame potassium,” another type of artificial sweetener. As it tends to have a bitter aftertaste, it’s typically used as part of a blend with another artificial sweetener. ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2020, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-sucralose/927773/29 "2020-12-10T20:36:44Z")
I like (and limit) sugar, and stevia (which I grow and use only in tea). The rest taste terrible to me. My lovely wife dislikes stevia. However, she doesn’t have diabetes, so she can enjoy more sucrose than I. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2020, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-sucralose/927773/30 "2020-12-10T20:48:19Z")
Yeah, I see it combined with aspartame as well. I think it was in the mid-90s in Europe that I first came across ace K (looks like the US didn’t approve its use in soft drinks until 1998), and it was in a combination with aspartame and that combo tasted surprisingly more sugar-like than aspartame alone. ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2020, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-sucralose/927773/31 "2020-12-10T20:51:14Z")
Gov. research showed saccharin caused cancer in lab animals. But there was such an uproar it was not banned because they said it would not have the same issue in people. Eventually they withdrew the finding about lab animals. ---
**Author:** ![Omniscient](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omniscient/32/3290_2.png) [@Omniscient](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omniscient)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2020, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-sucralose/927773/32 "2020-12-10T20:53:14Z")
Only in California though. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2020, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-sucralose/927773/33 "2020-12-10T21:03:27Z")
> [@Bijou\_Drains](#): > > Gov. research showed saccharin caused cancer in lab animals. But there was such an uproar it was not banned because they said it would not have the same issue in people. Eventually they withdrew the finding about lab animals. [Here’s a cite.](https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/diet/artificial-sweeteners-fact-sheet) > [@](#): > > Studies in laboratory rats during the early 1970s linked saccharin with the development of [bladder cancer](https://www.cancer.gov/Common/PopUps/popDefinition.aspx?id=CDR0000444968&version=Patient&language=English), especially in male rats. However, mechanistic studies (studies that examine how a substance works in the body) have shown that these results apply only to rats. Human [epidemiology](https://www.cancer.gov/Common/PopUps/popDefinition.aspx?id=CDR0000257225&version=Patient&language=English) studies (studies of patterns, causes, and control of diseases in groups of people) have shown no consistent evidence that saccharin is associated with bladder cancer [incidence](https://www.cancer.gov/Common/PopUps/popDefinition.aspx?id=CDR0000046145&version=Patient&language=English). ---
**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:** [December 10, 2020, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-sucralose/927773/34 "2020-12-10T21:05:06Z")
Still, I think people still remember those studies, so saccharine may be too tainted to be widely used. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2020, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-sucralose/927773/35 "2020-12-10T21:35:18Z")
If you buy something sweet with no sugar, then they’re sure as heck adding something to sweeten it. What they use instead of sugar might be sugar (in the form of, say, apple juice concentrate), or it might be an artificial sweetener, but whatever it is, it’s probably a good idea to find out before you buy it. Me, I’ve never tasted an artificial sweetener that tasted good to me. I haven’t tried them all, so it’s possible that there’s one or two that I like after all, but I’ll just have real sugar instead, because I know I like that. Stevia, I’ve only had as a fresh leaf, and it tasted OK, I guess, but too sweet on its own, and definitely different, in some hard to define way, from real sugar. ---
**Author:** ![Acierocolotl](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acierocolotl/32/6241_2.png) [@Acierocolotl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acierocolotl)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2020, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-sucralose/927773/36 "2020-12-10T23:58:04Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I was stumped by the reference to invert sugar having something to do with honey. I had assumed that “invert sugar” had something to do with L-glucose, the non-digestible left-handed version of ordinary right-handed glucose (D-glucose). I ended up on a Google dive into the world of sweeteners and discovered L-glucose was a dead end, and really isn’t used in anything. I still have no idea why a mixture of glucose and fructose is called “invert sugar”. Can anyone tell me what the heck is inverted about it? It’s because of the action of an enzyme called “invertase”. Invertase is, in short, an enzyme that breaks up sucrose into its component glucose and fructose moieties. You get a sweeter taste for the same amount of sugar, without having to use anything artificial, for sufficiently loose values of “artificial.” ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-sucralose/927773/37 "2020-12-11T00:05:47Z")
Me too ---
**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:** [December 11, 2020, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-sucralose/927773/38 "2020-12-11T00:14:33Z")
> [@Acierocolotl](#): > > It’s because of the action of an enzyme called “invertase”. Sounds good, except that invert sugar was first used in 1864 and invertase didn’t get coined until 1884, according to Merriam-Webster. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-sucralose/927773/39 "2020-12-11T00:27:53Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > > > Anecdotally speaking, it’s the only artificial sweetener I can stand. > > Huh. For me, that would be saccharin (sweet&low). To me, the sweeteners seem to have gotten better over time. saccharin is the worst, as it gets bitter very quickly (And thus is only good in things that are already somewhat bitter, like tea). Aspartame is better, but still has some aftertaste. Sucralose tastes the best, but still sugar has some more “bite” to it. Stevia is an exception–it’s also bitter. And the sugar alcohols taste good, but they cause stomach issues at the strengths needed for them to work. I suspect that I am in the majority group with these. For the main three, it makes sense they’d try to make them taste better over time, and why the newest one starts getting put into everything. Stevia was pushed as more “natural.” And if sugar alcohols didn’t have the GI problems, they’d be the clear winners. It would be interesting to see if there are other foods where you and I are backwards, where I think one tastes bitter while you like it, and you think something tastes bitter but I like it. It’s not like supertasters, who seem to just find more things bitter, since they’re more sensitive to it. It’s an actual reversal. ---
**Author:** ![Bootb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e19b73/32.png) [@Bootb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bootb)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-sucralose/927773/40 "2020-12-11T00:35:21Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > Still, I think people still remember those studies, so saccharine may be too tainted to be widely used. And yet Sweet&Low still has enough of a market to be worth selling. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-sucralose/927773.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-sucralose/927773.md?page=3)