How do artificial sweeteners work?

by Dr Nil Degrasteisen. Listen to the fascinating history beginning with the discovery of Pluto through its ultimate declassification as a planet, is written by haustuff Work's favorite astrophysicist. That's The Pluto Files, The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet, Available from Audible. To try Audible free today and to get a free audiobook of your choice, get an Audible podcast dot com slash brain Stuff. That's Audible podcast dot

com slash brain Stuff. I am Marshall brain with today's question, how do artificial sweeteners work? At many restaurants, you find that container on the table. It holds little packs of sugar along with little packets of artificial sweeteners. And anyone who is on a diet is familiar with artificial sweeteners. They're a big part of the dieting scene because they make low calorie soft drinks and desserts possible. Even though

they're ubiquitous, artificial sweeteners are also a little mysterious. What is happening when you eat or drink an artificial sweetener. The appropriate starting point is sugar, also known as sucros. This is the real sweetener compared to the artificial sweetener, and it's against sugar that all artificial sweeteners get measured. What is sugar and what makes it sweet? Sucros is officially known as a die saccharide, meaning that it has two saccharides. One of the sacarides is a glucose molecule

and the other is a fructose molecule. When sucros hits your tongue, it triggers the sweetness sensors in your taste buds, and these sensors send a this is sweet message to your brain. Any molecule that shares the same characteristics that trigger the taste buds will cause that same this is sweet message to go to your brain. So an artificial sweetener is simply any molecule other than sucros that happens to trigger the taste buds in a way that's similar

to sucros. In most cases, when scientists are looking for artificial sweeteners, they want the substitute molecule to have less calories than sucros, or to have some other difference that makes it better than sucros in some way. For example, an artificial sweetener might cause fewer cavities and sucros, or might be better for diabetics than sucros. The grand daddy of all artificial sweeteners is saccharin, which has been around

for more than a century. Compared to sucros, sacharin is hundreds of times sweeter when it hits the human tongue. The only problem with sacharin is the aftertaste that the same molecule triggers elsewhere on the tongue. Where sucros only seems to interact with sweet sensing taste buds, sacharin also interacts with taste buds that send bitter signals to the brain. Sacharin's advantage is that it has zero calories, perfect for dieters, and sacharin does not really enter the bloodstream, so for

diabetics it's a win as well. People either live with the aftertaste or food scientists blend sacharin with other artificial sweeteners in the hope of masking that aftertaste. The most popular artificial sweetener is aspartame, sold under the brand names like Nutra Sweet and Equal. Aspartame burst onto the scene around four when the Food and Drug Administration approved it in the United States. Aspartame quick Please started to replace

sacharin because it doesn't have that bitter aftertaste. The only real problem with aspartame from a taste standpoint is that it keeps triggering the taste buds for too long. As with sacharin, Blending aspartame with other artificial sweeteners can help address its taste problem. If you're a manufacturer, aspartame has two problems. First, it does not like heat, so you won't see aspartame used in baked products like cookies or cakes.

Aspartame also degrades with time and loses its sweetness, so a can of soda that contains aspartame can lose its sweetness over time. You may recall that soda started getting expiration dates after aspartame came out. This is one reason why if you look up aspartame on the internet, you'll find quite a bit of material claiming that it's poisonous.

There are lots and lots of videos on YouTube that will make this claim and explain to you wh i aspartame can cause problems for some people, But hundreds of millions of people have been using this chemical for decades with not that many complaints, and it's hard to argue with an experiment that has a sample size that's that immense. Sucralose, which is sold under the brand name Splenda, is the

next most popular artificial sweetener after aspartame. To make sucralose, a manufacturer starts with normal sucros and chemically changes it by adding chlorine. Atoms of the artificial sweeteners sold today, sucralose is the sweetest, about twice as sweet as sacharin, which is already hundreds of times sweeter than sucros. Combine that with the fact that the body does not digest most of the sucralos you ingest, and it's a zero

calorie sweetener. Sucralos lacks the bitter aftertaste of sacharin and the stability problems of aspartame, so it's likely to overtake aspartame as the most popular artificial sweetener in the near future. Supralos was approved by the FDA in which is why

it feels much newer than sacharin and aspartame do. If you hunt around on the internet and look on YouTube, you can find videos that claim that Splenda actually contains as many calories as a packet of sugar when you use it in a little packet like you would find at a restaurant. The reason is because of the bulking agents used, one of which is dextros. Is this true?

According to splendid dot com, it is true. Quote. Like other no calorie sweeteners on the market, Splenda no calorie sweetener packets and Splenda no calorie sweetened granulated products contain a small amount of carbohydrate less than one gram per serving to provide volume and texture. These common food ingredients

are dextros in the packets and multidextron packets ingranulated. These ingredients provide so few calories per serving that all Splendid no calorie sweetener products the Food and Drug Administration's criteria for no calorie foods less than five calories per serving end quote per gram. Therefore, these splendid products actually contained about as many calories as normal sugar does. Then there are the sugar alcohols. Zylotol is one sugar alcohol that

you may have heard of. Sugar alcohols do have calories two point five calories pergram versus four calories program for sugar, but not as many as sucros. One big advantage is the fact that they won't cause cavities and are safer for diabetics. One caution is that for many people, zylotol acts like a laxative when consumed in larger quantities. And finally, there's stevia, derived from plant fibers, which has been gaining

momentum since FDA approval came in two thousand eight. It's about as sweet as saccharine without the bitter aftertaste, and it has zero calories. It's been gaining traction in the marketplace recently because of a big advertising campaign and because it got a lot of publicity around its approval. What this means is that the little restaurant container on the table is getting more and more complex. It once contained only sugar and saccharine. Now it may contain three or

four different artificial options. Pick the one that tastes best to you. This podcast is brought to you by audible dot Com, the Internet's leading provider of audiobooks, with more than eighty five thousand downloadable titles across all types of literature and featuring audio versions of many New York Times bestsellers. To try Audible free today, and to get a free audiobook of your choice, get an audible podcast dot com slash brain stuff That Audible podcast dot com slash brain Stuff.

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