by jaybob

Created on: September 29, 2008   Last Updated: October 06, 2008

The North American diet can almost be defined by its sweet tooth. Even before the average American has breakfast, they can have one or two spoonfuls of tabletop sugar in their coffee or on their cereal. As a naturally occurring sweetener refined from sugar cane, sucrose wouldn't be an issue for the American diet if it didn't have four calories per gram; that would be about fifteen to forty calories per spoonful. Needless to say, alternative sweeteners have been researched and have been on the market for many years. The question becomes which alternative non-nutritive sweeter is best for you.

Sucralose (Splenda)

Sucralose is a non-calorie sweetener that is made from sucrose (normal sugar) and is one hundred times sweeter with zero calories. Discovered in 1976, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved it after well over a hundred studies confirmed its safety as a wide spectrum alternative sweetener. Today, it is found in many processed foods readily available on the market and is primarily found in baked goods, candy, substitute dairy products and other frozen treats. Sucralose works by simply not being processed as a sugar in the digestive system. Sucralose harmlessly passes through, undigested, and the food that contains it can be considered having no calories from the artificial sweetener at all. Given that it has a more natural source (sugar) and the fact that it retains its sweetness in cooking, sucralose can be considered one of your first choices in an alternative sweetener.

Aspartame (NutraSweet)

Aspartame is a non-nutritive sweetener one hundred sixty to two hundred times sweeter than sugar. It is a chemical product of two amino acids: Aspartic acid, and Phenylalanine. These two amino acids are broken down to again in digestion, and this process has been found problematic by the FDA. A metabolic defect that people can be born with called Phenylketonuria (PKU) means that they lack the enzyme necessary to break down Phenylalanine which can build up in their nervous system, causing mental disabilities in younger children. Despite this characteristic quirk of aspartame, it is still one of the more common alternative sweeteners on the market and is manufactures first choice in most diet soft drinks and sodas. Because it breaks down when heated during the baking process, aspartame isn't very much good for cooking either. Though it may be significantly sweeter than sugar with far fewer calories, for the most part aspartame should be avoided by children.

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