Lowcarbezine!

Important Splenda Info

There's no question why Splenda has taken over the artificial sweetener market in a big way - it simply tastes better than anything else out there. However, my email shows that there is some confusion about it. Here's one query I got:

I was in a low-carb chat room and the management of the chat room flashes low-carb info. across the screen occasionally... Like drink lots of water and stuff like that. They send one that says that something like "one cup of Splenda contains 40+ carbs...." Can this be right??? If someone makes homemade Kool Aid with Splenda, then they are just drinking empty carbs. (I have a friend who does that although personally I like the water where I live)

Cordially,

Clint McHann

No, Clint, the 40 grams per cup figure for granular Splenda is not correct. However, there are 24 grams of carbohydrate in a cup of Splenda, which is enough to pay attention to. Why, then, does the Splenda package say that Splenda has 0 carbs per serving (not to mention 0 calories?) Because a "serving" is just 1 teaspoon, and contains roughly 0.5 grams of carbohydrate. The federal government of the USA allows food processors to round down any carb count of 0.5 grams per serving or less to "0 grams." Voila, a "carb-free" product!

However, what is carb-free in theory is not carb-free in practice, and that 0.5 grams per teaspoon figure means that 1 tablespoon has 1.5 grams, and 1 cup (16 tablespoons) has 24 grams. That's 1/8 the carbohydrate of sugar - a big improvement. However, that carbohydrate comes in the form of the maltodextrin used to bulk the unbelievably sweet sucralose till it's the same sweetness as sugar - and maltodextrin is a high impact carb with no nutritional value.

(This is as good a place as any to point out that Splenda's claims of being "calorie free" also rest on the same legalism. 24 grams of carbohydrate per cup means 96 calories per cup - not a lot compared to sugar, but enough that it will influence the final calorie count of desserts and other things made with quantities of Splenda.)

It's important to realize that "granular Splenda" - the stuff sold in bulk, by the box or the "baker's bag" - is bulked considerably more than the stuff in the packets. The stuff in the packets is considerably sweeter, and has a lower carb count. Sadly, I can't find a hard figure on exactly how much carb is in the little packets, but it's definitely less than the granular Splenda. How to convert Splenda granular to the packets? I've only used the granular, so I didn't know, but here's an email I received:

Dana -

I have used the Splenda packets in cooking - but for baked goods, the bulk of the baking bag of Splenda is much better. For drink mixes like Kool-Aid and homemade lemonade - 16 packets of Splenda is about the sweetness equivalent of one cup of sugar.

Stacey Brock

Very helpful info, Stacey. Thank you! (Note to self: Buy Splenda packets...)

Why bulk Splenda at all? Why not just let us all have the liquid sucralose being used by the food processors? Because pure sucralose is seriously sweet - reportedly 600 times as sweet as sugar. That's an impractical degree of sweetness for home use. To sweeten a cup of coffee, you'd have to dip a pinhead in the pure sucralose, then use it to stir with, and even then you might get too much.

However, there's nothing keeping McNeil Nutritionals (the US manufacturer/distributor of Splenda for the home market) from giving us liquid sucralose diluted with water to a usable strength. After all, liquid saccharine was in widespread use for years, and is still available - it is generally diluted to the point where a few drops equal the sweetness of a teaspoon of sugar, which is an easy level of sweetness to control. A product like this wouldn't work well for baked goods like cookies, because it would be hard to distribute evenly through the dough. But in moister products, like cheesecakes and muffins, it would be simple to stir a liquid sucralose product into the other liquid ingredients, and we could shave a good couple of grams off of a serving.

And of course for use in liquids, such as coffee, tea, or lemonade, liquid Splenda would be preferable.

So why won't McNeil give us liquid Splenda? Your guess is as good as mine, but it's really starting to annoy me. There have been a few companies that have sold a low carb "syrup concentrate" that consisted simply of liquid sucralose diluted with water to a usable strength, but they come and go, apparently because McNeil is uncooperative. The only liquid sucralose product I know that has been on the market consistently for at least a few years is Fiberfit, which is marketed as a fiber supplement instead of a sweetener. You can find it here: http://www.trulylowcarb.com/fiberfit.htm I have used Fiberfit, and I think it's quite good.

However, it would be very nice if we could all purchase liquid Splenda in our grocery stores, along with the granular and the packets. I have talked to a representative of McNeil, and they claim there's not enough demand for liquid Splenda. I find this difficult to believe, since I know that many of my readers have called McNeil in the past to say how much they'd like to be able to purchase such a product, but perhaps the message still hasn't gotten through. So I urge you to call McNeil at 1-800-7-SPLENDA, and tell them that WE WANT CARB-FREE LIQUID SPLENDA! Heck, pass the number around to your low carbing friends who don't get this ezine. Post it on bulletin boards. Call them weekly. Deluge their switchboard with requests for liquid Splenda.

Perhaps if we annoy them enough, they'll get the message.

Posted by HoldTheToast at May 23, 2004 04:00 PM