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Sucralose -- Splenda -- Substitute for Sugar.  Is It Safe?

I had this question from a reader, published in full, and then started the research on Splenda, Sucralose, and ultimately, "chlorinated sugar!"  Karl Loren

References From This Page:

Splenda

Sucralose

Many Others with links shown below

March 13, 2002
Dear Karl,

I really enjoy your site--I've been here several times over the last year, and the things I read here really make me take a hard look at what I eat and why, and I've actually changed things a lot.  I'm on Atkins low-carb plan, which I know is not your favorite, but it works for me right now, and I'm not quite ready for Paleolithic plans just yet.

I was wondering what your opinion of sucralose, marketed under the brand name Splenda, is?  I used this stuff for a couple months before reading up on it (stupid me!)  Splenda's web site offers the vague description "SPLENDA® is the brand name for the ingredient sucralose. It is made by a patented multi-step process that starts with cane sugar and converts it to a no calorie, non-carbohydrate sweetener."

Hmm, that doesn't mean much.  But Tate & Lyle's Official Sucralose Site is much more informative.  Their description is "Sucralose is the only calorie-free sweetener made from sugar. It is produced using a patented multi-step process that selectively substitutes three atoms of chlorine for three hydrogen-oxygen groups on the sucrose molecule. The tightly bound chlorine atoms create a molecular structure that is exceptionally stable under extreme pH and temperature conditions and is 600 times sweeter than sugar."

Well, of course my first though is, CHLORINE?  Yikes!  No wonder Splenda's site doesn't mention that.  I'm thinking, chlorinated table sugar, but of course that's just my tendency toward grammaticism.  The truth is I don't understand at all what that really means, and other people tend to compare it to table salt, which also contains chlorine.  Personally I don't feel that is a valid comparison, but what do I know?

Anyway, I've done a lot of reading, and I'm getting frown lines in my forehead from some of the things I've seen about sucralose, our new miracle sweetener.  I wondered, if you have a minute someday, if you could give me your take on the stuff?

Thanks,
Sandra Miller

Dear Sandra,

Well, that is one of the must fully researched questions I've had in some time.

Congratulations on your understanding of these terms and presenting a question with excellent results of your own research.

I've decided to spend some time on this.

I suspect, before I start, that the answer lies in some depth of understanding of chemistry that I may have to struggle with.

Click here to read several pages of information about "Splenda®" the non-caloric sweetener.

As I read it, it was certainly reassuring, as you said.

I then looked for information on sucralose, and found that -- click here.

That information, also, seemed reassuring, although, as you said, there was that scary term, "chlorine."

I noted that the information I found, probably like you, was from a source that would certainly be very anxious to find an alternative to "sugar" and also to find that whatever that alternative was, it WOULD BE SAFE!  The source of my information is something called the "Calorie Control Council," apparently made up of food manufacturers.

Since there was a claim of FDA approval, I looked for that, and found it here.

There is another official government-type report on its safety HERE.

I found another article -- click here -- that presents an overview of "sweeteners" and is approving of Splenda.

This article (above) makes Aspartame sound safe.  I don't think it is.  Thus, I don't much trust the rest of the report, including the comments on Splenda.  For instance, click here for a list of MANY links to many studies and pages condemning Aspartame.  Splenda has not been around long enough to attract this much attention -- or, if you care to take the risk, perhaps Splenda is really safe?

I looked further, and found one study that claimed that sucralose was not sufficiently tested to be safe for use -- click here.

Another scientist who I admire for most of his work also found that sucralose was not safe -- click here for his article.

As you said, "salt" contains atoms of chlorine, but then salt has been around for many millions of years, and has been consumed, and found useful, by man and animals for those millions of years.  Chlorine is also commonly added to our drinking water, although THAT chlorine has probably attracted literally thousands of serious studies that show how harmful it is.

Salt, though?

Well, salt is a combination of sodium and chlorine -- but this solid material requires a temperature of 800 degrees Centigrade before it turns into a liquid.  Even then, when cooled, it returns to the solid state of SALT.

Only at the temperature of 1,600 degrees Centigrade does SALT become a gas -- and finally the atoms of sodium and the atoms of chlorine become separated -- the salt thus, requires some rather forceful attention before it turns into chlorine as a separate substance.  Click here for three dimensional and moving molecular models of salt.

You could say, without emotion, that "God made salt!""

Certainly, "God did not make sucralose!"

I am about ready to say, "Well it MIGHT be safe, but I wouldn't use it, personally!"

But, my final word is that there is a senior datum here, one that I covered in my major article about diet.  I quote it here, as well as provide a link to the entire article.

Thus, the material below make it clear that, at least in my opinion, the desire for the taste sensation of SWEET is one of the most terrible problems we have in terms of health in America. This desire for the sensation for sweet causes people to eat far more than they should. We have, now, about one third of all Americans seriously overweight, and about 20% enough overweight to be considered medically obese! 

Do you enjoy sweet??

Yes, you might handle that ADDICTION with Splenda, but wouldn't you be better off with a proper diet, and by reducing your desire for taste sensation?

So, don't go toward Splenda, go for no desire for sugar sensation in the first place.

Karl Loren

Basic Instinct! Wolves Howl!  It is their nature to howl!

Wolves Howl!  It is a basic instinct that has probably not changed for millions of years!  Man has basic instincts -- we don't even question their existence!  (That howl you may have heard when this page loaded comes from this Timber Wolf!  Click your refresh button to hear it again!)

I believe that man has several instincts that seem very basic.  Of these, the most basic is the instinct to survive -- to continue living.  This is the driving motivation in all living things - man, animal and plant.

But, very close to that instinct is another -- that is the instinct to desire and experience sensations.  The two sensations that probably come first to mind are sex and food.  The human body seems to desire the sensations of sex and food.  They also seem "natural," since without sex, there would be no children, and no future. Without food there would be starvations and death.

So, these desires for the sensations related to the basics of life seem very rational. But, it is also obvious that a person can be very insane on the subject of sex -- seeking sexual sensation far, far beyond that needed to create children.  There are vast quantities of energy devoted to sexual activities that have nothing to do with creating children -- these would all be classified as pursuing this instinctive desire for sensation for the sake of the sensation itself -- not for the sake of survival.

The desire for food sensation has obviously gone far beyond the needs of the body -- to a degree of obesity in our society that is now contrary to survival. 

The drive to survive is sane and logical for any living thing.  The next instinct may have seemed to have survival value, but it certainly doesn't in today's world!   Desire For Sensation is, I think you'll find, exactly contrary to survival, and thus an aberration today.  

ts original survival value of the desire for sensation probably related to "good things taste good" and "bad things taste bad."  If that were always true, then the desire for sensation would be wholly useful.  And, it may even BE true of natural tastes -- that is, food items that have never been cooked or processed beyond their original natural form.

We also have a large bird feeder in the back.  It holds 25 pounds of bird seed, and often will be emptied in just a few days. The bird feeder is on a pole stuck in the ground just 18" from the backyard fence.

One day, as my daughter looked out the back picture window, onto the back yard, she saw a deer eating our roses!  He had a five point horn (each side) so that's a pretty big deer.  He was IN BETWEEN the bird feeder and the fence -- stuck in that 18" space, gently poking his nose through the bars of the fence and nibbling the rose blossoms and buds.

We stood not 12 feet from him, glass door closed, dogs all growling and eager to go out and defend the territory, but he just kept eating.

I believe my wife now when she says that virtually ALL our roses are eaten by the visiting deer. The point of this? Well, I think that the desire for sensation in the deer leads him to eat exactly the right foods for him, at the time he needs them.

To eat JUST the rose blossom, or bud, must mean that there is something in that flower that is needed in the deer's diet -- something he doesn't get from grass or other food sources.  After all he has to come close to a house, where dogs bark, and poke his nose THROUGH a fence to reach a rose bush, and then even put himself into a tight spot -- just to eat a rose flower.

I don't know what is in the rose that the deer needs and I don't think the deer "thinks" about it the way I might, but I do know that deer like roses.

So, as I've suggested, man's instinctive desire to satisfy his cravings based on sensation seems to work not very well for man, but the similar desire for sensation must be leading the deer to eat what he eats.

Well Done!  Deer!

Among the various sensations we experience are those of hunger, thirst and pain.  Certainly the sensation of pain would seem to be designed to warn us away from something -- seems pretty sane to me.

The sensation of hunger, I've learned, can become very misleading.  I've written extensively on the fact that a body not getting enough water will experience a "sensation" that you usually perceive as "hunger" when, in fact, it is "thirst."  You react to this sensation of "hunger" by eating when, in fact, the true need is for water -- which is not well served by food.  So, the sensation of "hunger" continues (being really "thirst") and you eat more food -- not what the body needs.

People often wrongly believe that coffee, soda or tea will handle the body's need for water -- they do not.  You experience "thirst" and drink a soda.  Somewhere there the proper sensation (thirst) is being handled with the wrong response (coffee) --- so that, again, is an example of the instinct for survival being overthrown by the desire for the sensation of the coffee or soda.  These are, of course, both addictive drugs!

So, it is clear to me that sensations can be false signals, or perceived wrongly.

In this same way the desire for sensation for sweet, for instance, can lead one astray -- trying to satisfy this desire with sugar which is harmful, when some other nutrient might much better serve the body.

t could be that the first "drug" on our planet was cooked food -- it appeared to taste better, but it was harmful to survival.  Animals will eat cooked food, but I think only when they have no other choice.

Man's desire for sensation seems to be implanted , not natural.  Even Aristotle wrote about it.  Aristotle didn't have the depth of wisdom of The Buddha on this subject.  The Lord Buddha rightly counseled that man would not be spiritually free as long as he was tied to the desire for body sensations.

If you study carefully I think you'll find that a great deal of man's behavior is motivated by his desire for sensation.

This "sensation" doesn't have some fancy, strange definition.

I am talking about, primarily, the desire for sexual sensation and the desire for taste sensation.  You might have a sensation of "success" but I am talking about the obvious physical sensations that can be experience by our bodies.

I think you'll find that most of the pattern of social behavior you observe can be understood to be man's unending quest for sensation -- sexual and taste.  That may be controversial enough to get you off the diet track I'm on  -- but let's stay on the diet track and accept for a moment that ancient man, as well as modern man, has an inherent desire for sensation.  Sweet things taste "good."  Bitter things don't.  There are some who would say that "bad" tastes are simply nature's warnings of toxicity?  But that is too glib, and not universally true.

The desire for sex sensation is probably more harmful and more pervasive, and obviously more hidden than the desire for taste sensation.  An article in the Wall Street Journal gives us a peek.  Americans spend millions of dollars ever year on internet pornography -- "web sex" is the ultimate in "safe" since you experience it in the privacy of your home, and no matter what foolish psychologist might defend one-handed sex, there can be nothing healthy or natural about this type of "sex."  Yet people seek it desperately!

The porn viewers were told they were being charged to view sex videos over a phone line to Madagascar at a rate of $3.99 a minute, the complaint says. But the FTC concluded that the phone calls actually terminated in the United Kingdom and should have cost only eight cents a minute. Verity, the agency alleged, intended to pocket the difference.

The operation described by the FTC appears to have been huge. In a single week in September, about 67,000 U.S. households received bills from Verity, according to the FTC. The average overcharge was $222, with some overcharges topping $4,000, the agency said.

For now I'll limit my writing to man's desire for taste sensation, even though the desire for sex sensation is probably much stronger and has more impact on behavior.

When you have a built-in desire for sensation, along with a desire for simple survival, you can get conflicts.

You KNOW (don't you) that cocaine is not healthy, but those who desire this sensation let the desire for sensation overpower their desire for survival.

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