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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.