Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff Works dot com
Speaker 1: where smart Happens. This podcast is brought to you by
Speaker 1: Audible dot com, the Internet's leading provider of audio books,
Speaker 1: with more than eighty five thousand downloadable titles across all
Speaker 1: types of literature. For brain Stuff listeners, Audible is offering
Speaker 1: a free audio book to give you a chance to
Speaker 1: try out their service. One audiobook to consider is The
Speaker 1: Pluto Files, The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet
Speaker 1: by Dr Nil Degrasteisen. Listen to the fascinating history beginning
Speaker 1: with the discovery of Pluto through its ultimate declassification as
Speaker 1: a planet, is written by haustuff Work's favorite astrophysicist. That's
Speaker 1: The Pluto Files, The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet,
Speaker 1: Available from Audible. To try Audible free today and to
Speaker 1: get a free audiobook of your choice, get an Audible
Speaker 1: podcast dot com slash brain Stuff. That's Audible podcast dot
Speaker 1: com slash brain Stuff. I am Marshall brain with today's question,
Speaker 1: how do artificial sweeteners work? At many restaurants, you find
Speaker 1: that container on the table. It holds little packs of
Speaker 1: sugar along with little packets of artificial sweeteners. And anyone
Speaker 1: who is on a diet is familiar with artificial sweeteners.
Speaker 1: They're a big part of the dieting scene because they
Speaker 1: make low calorie soft drinks and desserts possible. Even though
Speaker 1: they're ubiquitous, artificial sweeteners are also a little mysterious. What
Speaker 1: is happening when you eat or drink an artificial sweetener.
Speaker 1: The appropriate starting point is sugar, also known as sucros.
Speaker 1: This is the real sweetener compared to the artificial sweetener,
Speaker 1: and it's against sugar that all artificial sweeteners get measured.
Speaker 1: What is sugar and what makes it sweet? Sucros is
Speaker 1: officially known as a die saccharide, meaning that it has
Speaker 1: two saccharides. One of the sacarides is a glucose molecule
Speaker 1: and the other is a fructose molecule. When sucros hits
Speaker 1: your tongue, it triggers the sweetness sensors in your taste buds,
Speaker 1: and these sensors send a this is sweet message to
Speaker 1: your brain. Any molecule that shares the same characteristics that
Speaker 1: trigger the taste buds will cause that same this is
Speaker 1: sweet message to go to your brain. So an artificial
Speaker 1: sweetener is simply any molecule other than sucros that happens
Speaker 1: to trigger the taste buds in a way that's similar
Speaker 1: to sucros. In most cases, when scientists are looking for
Speaker 1: artificial sweeteners, they want the substitute molecule to have less
Speaker 1: calories than sucros, or to have some other difference that
Speaker 1: makes it better than sucros in some way. For example,
Speaker 1: an artificial sweetener might cause fewer cavities and sucros, or
Speaker 1: might be better for diabetics than sucros. The grand daddy
Speaker 1: of all artificial sweeteners is saccharin, which has been around
Speaker 1: for more than a century. Compared to sucros, sacharin is
Speaker 1: hundreds of times sweeter when it hits the human tongue.
Speaker 1: The only problem with sacharin is the aftertaste that the
Speaker 1: same molecule triggers elsewhere on the tongue. Where sucros only
Speaker 1: seems to interact with sweet sensing taste buds, sacharin also
Speaker 1: interacts with taste buds that send bitter signals to the brain.
Speaker 1: Sacharin's advantage is that it has zero calories, perfect for dieters,
Speaker 1: and sacharin does not really enter the bloodstream, so for
Speaker 1: diabetics it's a win as well. People either live with
Speaker 1: the aftertaste or food scientists blend sacharin with other artificial
Speaker 1: sweeteners in the hope of masking that aftertaste. The most
Speaker 1: popular artificial sweetener is aspartame, sold under the brand names
Speaker 1: like Nutra Sweet and Equal. Aspartame burst onto the scene
Speaker 1: around four when the Food and Drug Administration approved it
Speaker 1: in the United States. Aspartame quick Please started to replace
Speaker 1: sacharin because it doesn't have that bitter aftertaste. The only
Speaker 1: real problem with aspartame from a taste standpoint is that
Speaker 1: it keeps triggering the taste buds for too long. As
Speaker 1: with sacharin, Blending aspartame with other artificial sweeteners can help
Speaker 1: address its taste problem. If you're a manufacturer, aspartame has
Speaker 1: two problems. First, it does not like heat, so you
Speaker 1: won't see aspartame used in baked products like cookies or cakes.
Speaker 1: Aspartame also degrades with time and loses its sweetness, so
Speaker 1: a can of soda that contains aspartame can lose its
Speaker 1: sweetness over time. You may recall that soda started getting
Speaker 1: expiration dates after aspartame came out. This is one reason
Speaker 1: why if you look up aspartame on the internet, you'll
Speaker 1: find quite a bit of material claiming that it's poisonous.
Speaker 1: There are lots and lots of videos on YouTube that
Speaker 1: will make this claim and explain to you wh i
Speaker 1: aspartame can cause problems for some people, But hundreds of
Speaker 1: millions of people have been using this chemical for decades
Speaker 1: with not that many complaints, and it's hard to argue
Speaker 1: with an experiment that has a sample size that's that immense. Sucralose,
Speaker 1: which is sold under the brand name Splenda, is the
Speaker 1: next most popular artificial sweetener after aspartame. To make sucralose,
Speaker 1: a manufacturer starts with normal sucros and chemically changes it
Speaker 1: by adding chlorine. Atoms of the artificial sweeteners sold today,
Speaker 1: sucralose is the sweetest, about twice as sweet as sacharin,
Speaker 1: which is already hundreds of times sweeter than sucros. Combine
Speaker 1: that with the fact that the body does not digest
Speaker 1: most of the sucralos you ingest, and it's a zero
Speaker 1: calorie sweetener. Sucralos lacks the bitter aftertaste of sacharin and
Speaker 1: the stability problems of aspartame, so it's likely to overtake
Speaker 1: aspartame as the most popular artificial sweetener in the near future.
Speaker 1: Supralos was approved by the FDA in which is why
Speaker 1: it feels much newer than sacharin and aspartame do. If
Speaker 1: you hunt around on the internet and look on YouTube,
Speaker 1: you can find videos that claim that Splenda actually contains
Speaker 1: as many calories as a packet of sugar when you
Speaker 1: use it in a little packet like you would find
Speaker 1: at a restaurant. The reason is because of the bulking
Speaker 1: agents used, one of which is dextros. Is this true?
Speaker 1: According to splendid dot com, it is true. Quote. Like
Speaker 1: other no calorie sweeteners on the market, Splenda no calorie
Speaker 1: sweetener packets and Splenda no calorie sweetened granulated products contain
Speaker 1: a small amount of carbohydrate less than one gram per
Speaker 1: serving to provide volume and texture. These common food ingredients
Speaker 1: are dextros in the packets and multidextron packets ingranulated. These
Speaker 1: ingredients provide so few calories per serving that all Splendid
Speaker 1: no calorie sweetener products the Food and Drug Administration's criteria
Speaker 1: for no calorie foods less than five calories per serving
Speaker 1: end quote per gram. Therefore, these splendid products actually contained
Speaker 1: about as many calories as normal sugar does. Then there
Speaker 1: are the sugar alcohols. Zylotol is one sugar alcohol that
Speaker 1: you may have heard of. Sugar alcohols do have calories
Speaker 1: two point five calories pergram versus four calories program for sugar,
Speaker 1: but not as many as sucros. One big advantage is
Speaker 1: the fact that they won't cause cavities and are safer
Speaker 1: for diabetics. One caution is that for many people, zylotol
Speaker 1: acts like a laxative when consumed in larger quantities. And finally,
Speaker 1: there's stevia, derived from plant fibers, which has been gaining
Speaker 1: momentum since FDA approval came in two thousand eight. It's
Speaker 1: about as sweet as saccharine without the bitter aftertaste, and
Speaker 1: it has zero calories. It's been gaining traction in the
Speaker 1: marketplace recently because of a big advertising campaign and because
Speaker 1: it got a lot of publicity around its approval. What
Speaker 1: this means is that the little restaurant container on the
Speaker 1: table is getting more and more complex. It once contained
Speaker 1: only sugar and saccharine. Now it may contain three or
Speaker 1: four different artificial options. Pick the one that tastes best
Speaker 1: to you. This podcast is brought to you by audible
Speaker 1: dot Com, the Internet's leading provider of audiobooks, with more
Speaker 1: than eighty five thousand downloadable titles across all types of
Speaker 1: literature and featuring audio versions of many New York Times bestsellers.
Speaker 1: To try Audible free today, and to get a free
Speaker 1: audiobook of your choice, get an audible podcast dot com
Speaker 1: slash brain stuff That Audible podcast dot com slash brain Stuff.
Speaker 1: The house stuff us I Find app has arrived. Download
Speaker 1: it today on iTunes