Sugar and Sweetener Wars

What are all those sweetener packets in the rack at your local greasy spoon?

Sweet ‘N Low: 

This is saccharin. Back in the 1970s, folks at the FDA fed pounds of this stuff to white rats and a few got bladder cancer. There was a major freak out, abetted by the sugar industry, but subsequent tests showed saccharin acts differently in rats and humans, and there is no evidence that saccharin, at any level, causes cancer in humans. This stuff is harmless, i.e. it is generally regarded as safe.

Equal and NutraSweet: 

This is aspartame, which is two amino acids plus methyl ester. Something like 1 in 25,000 people have a genetic condition that prevents them from metabolizing one of the amino acids in Equal and NutraSweet, a fact noted on the packet. The National Cancer Institute has reviewed data from a half a million retirees and found no correlation between aspartame use and cancer. Unless you are that rare bird that has that allergy this stuff is safe.

Truvia:

This is Stevia, a sweetener derived from a South American shrub. An extract of Stevia was approved by the FDA in 2009 and appears to be as harmless as all the other artificial sweeteners

Splenda: 

This is sucralose, i.e. sugar that has been treated to remove part of the sugar molecule in order to replace it with chlorine atoms. This chlorinated sugar is sufficiently different from regular sugar that the body does not know how to handle it, and so the body pisses it out undigested. Testing has shown Splenda to be harmless.

Sugar: 

There are all kinds of sugar, but none has been proven to be “better” than another. Corn syrup and honey are not better than white sugar, which has about 15 calories a teaspoonful. The problem with all sugars is that calories can kill you and they frequently do – about 40% of all Americans are overweight.