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Splenda^®: Is It Safe Or Not?
Dr. Janet Hull reveals the scientific evidence strongly suggesting the chemical sweetener sucralose may harm your body. Visit Is Splenda Safe.com for more information!

Baking With Splenda

Baking With Splenda
By Dr. Janet Starr Hull

"Baking studies have shown that Splenda is exceptionally heat-stable," brag McNeil representatives. "No measurable breakdown of Splenda occurred in any of the baked goods tested. One-hundred percent of sucralose was recovered from cakes, biscuits, and crackers after baking at typical temperatures of 350oF, 410oF, and 450oF, respectively." Splenda studies prove that Splenda maintains its sweetness during cooking and in storage for long periods of time, and in contrast these studies have proven for us that aspartame does not.

Barndt and Jackson performed one such study in 1990.¹ The purpose of the sucralose processing study was to demonstrate sucralose stability in a variety of common baked goods. Yellow cake, cookies, and graham crackers were selected because they represent a common cross section of common ingredients and typical process conditions used in the baking industry. For each baked product, no peaks other than sucralose could be detected. Using aqueous/methanolic (methanol) extracts of the baked products, a one-hundred percent sucralose recovery was found, which proved sucralose did not interact with any other ingredients during baking, and that the compound remained stable under baking conditions. Its inability to break down when heated also proves it maintains extremely unnatural physical properties both in baked food products and in the human body.²

Kim Clay, director of communications for Merisant Corp., the current Chicago-based manufacturer of NutraSweet/Equal was quoted as admitting in reference to Equal not used well in baking, "There are special recipes that the Equal test kitchen has developed, so Equal can be used in baking," Clay explained. "You just have to do it a certain way, at the end of the baking cycle."

So, Equal doesn't bake safely and Splenda doesn't "bake" at all - what is this doing to the health of a five year old?

Splenda is marketed as being 600 times sweeter than sugar, but its sweetness can vary up to 4,000 times sweeter according to the patent information, and depending on the food application it is found in and what other artificial sweeteners it is blended with. And the "bigger the number" doesn't mean it's necessarily better. The more inflated a chemical sweetener is (such as 600 times or 4,000 times sweeter than real sugar), the farther from natural it is, the more chemicals are required to prevent it from "digesting" which makes it harmful to the body, and the harder it is to cook with.

"What most people don't know," comments Kelly Goyen, CEO of Empirical Labs, "is sweeteners merely fifty to one-hundred times sweeter than sugar bake better and retain more of the texture of real food. And to enhance sucralose's sweeter taste, it is bulked-up with maltodextrin, a starchy powder, so it can measure more like sugar."

A basic law of physics: when any matter is heated, it physically changes, typically breaking down. How unnatural is a substance that doesn't break down when heated? I wouldn't want that in my cocoa!

Splenda's Shelf-Life
Results of a 1999 McNeil study of carbonated cola at pH 3.1 (very acidic) sweetened with either Splenda or aspartame, showed that after one year of storage at seventy-three degrees Fahrenheit, ninety-nine percent of the Splenda remained unchanged compared to twenty-nine percent of the aspartame. The effect of storage on the flavor of cola drinks sweetened with sugar (control group), sucralose, aspartame, and an aspartame/acesulfame K blend was studied over a period of six months in storage at twenty degrees Centigrade at pH 3.0.

Sucralose stability and flavor retention were of particular focus. An "expert sensory panel" confirmed each sweetener system to be of equal sweetness and comparable in flavor:

• The sucralose cola retained an initial flavor, except for a slight increase in metallic flavor, and maintained its approximate sweetness intensity over the duration of six months.
• In comparison, both other experimental sweeteners decreased in sweetness intensity and increased in bitterness.
• The sucralose cola retained its cola flavor over six months.
• Aspartame and aspartame/acesulfame-K blend colas decreased in cola flavor.
• The control sugar cola retained its initial flavor and sweetness.

So if sucralose is "indigestible" due to its laboratory compounding as the manufacturer claims, and corporate studies show it preserves almost completely unaltered after sitting in a can for six months, then we have yet another serious health problem to consider – the body by nature will work even more diligently to digest the chemicals, elevating liver enzymes, stomach enzymes, and intestinal bacteria – all placing stress and trauma on the body, and depleting its nutrients.

References:

1. Barndt, R. L., & Jackson, G. (1990). Stability of sucralose in baked goods. Food Technology, 44, 62-66.
2. Ibid.

Posted on February 7, 2005 in Cooking | Link To This Entry | Comments (3)

Comments

Posted by: hank altvater on February 16, 2005 5:39 PM

 

Posted by: Dr. Janet Starr Hull on March 13, 2005 9:39 PM

 

Posted by: Esther Crowell on March 9, 2006 6:11 PM