What’ll it be, sugar?
The bittersweet truth about artificial sweeteners
By Morgan Lord
Between the salt shaker and the Heinz 57 sits a box jammed with pastel packets. Thinking I’ll dodge a few calories, I dump one into my coffee. If you do the same every morning or slurp a Diet Coke midday, welcome to the club. According to a 2006 survey from Mintel Reports, 61 percent of U.S. women use artificial sweeteners daily, and 50 percent drink diet soda. But while the three biggies — saccharin, aspartame, and sucralose — contain hardly any calories, one glance at America’s collective flab leaves you wondering if they’re doing anyone any good.
Color Wars
What exactly is in these packets? The pink one, Sweet’N Low, contains saccharin. Your grandma’s sugar substitute, saccharin was discovered in 1879 and is the result of a chemical reaction that produces methyl anthranilate (yum!). It has only 1/8 calorie per teaspoon versus sugar’s 15, yet it’s 300 times sweeter than the natural stuff. The downside of saccharin — used in toothpastes like Colgate and Crest and the diet soda Tab — is obvious; it has a bitter, chemical aftertaste.
