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Ever wondered what Splenda(Sucralose) is and how it came to be?
Like several other sugar substitutes, such as saccharin and aspartame, Sucralose was discovered by accident. In 1976 the British agricultural chemical company Tate & Lyle hired chemists at Queen Elizabeth College to test the industrial uses of chlorinated sugar molecules. In laymen terms, they were testing sugar that had some molecules removed, and the molecules were replaced by Chlorine molecules.
Lead chemist Leslie Hough asked his assistant, Shashikant Phadnis, to test one of the powdered compounds. But Phadnis, an Indian native and new to England and English language, thought Hough had told him to taste it, so he tasted it. Luckily, the compound was not poisonous, and the compound tasted sweet.
After a year of testing, the formula was finished and the chemically altered sugar was determined to be 600 times as sweet as real sugar. Sucralose offered the taste of sugar with no aftertaste and virtually no calories. And unlike other sugar substitutes, Sucralose could stand up to heat and freezing, making it suitable for cooking and baking. The Chemical was first approved for use in Canada, and the chemical Sucralose was sold and marketed as Splenda in 1991.
So even though it taste like sugar, you are ultimately ingesting chlorine every time you eat it… yummy!
