As sweet as it comes

As sweet as it comes

Sucralose is a non-caloric sweetener.

It is an approved food additive and is also called E 955 and it is also available as a tabletop sweetener under the brand name SPLENDA. Sucralose is used in diet sodas, yoghurts

It is the only non-caloric sweetener made from sugar, yet it is 600 times sweeter than sucrose which is ordinary sugar. Sucralose tastes like sugar and it has a clean, sweet taste that does not leave an unpleasant aftertaste compared to other artificial sweeteners and it passes rapidly through the body virtually unchanged and it is proven non-toxic to humans in the amounts it is used in food products.

Well, I have enjoyed my occasional use of low-calorie sweeteners as they have tasted artificial which goes well together with the junk food it has been accompanied with but the new Coca Cola being too sweet for my taste as it now contains Sucralose and this little secret pleasure of mine has come to an end but out of a completely different reason.

Sucralose as sweetener may sound good for dieters, but there seems to be a down side to it as 85% of the Sucralose we take in comes out as it was ingested, most of it remains as it was when swallowed and it is neither converted into something else in our digestive tract. So where does it go then?

According to recent Swedish research the Sucralose passes out of us down the toilet ending up in the nature as the today used wastewater treatment processes the have little effect on Sucralose removal rates and the breaking down of the Sucralose molecule is very slow in the nature and there is no knowledge whether the discharge of it into nature has any eco-toxical effects or not.