Sucralose - the Silent Killer in Your Juice and Soda

In May of 1998 American shoppers began to see a new type of RC Cola on the store shelves. It was a soda with an artificial sweetener. It had not been sweetened with saccharin or cyclamate. It had been sweetened with sucralose.

At that time, the Canadians had been drinking beverages sweetened with sucralose for more almost 7 years. The Canadian government had approved sale of products containing sucralose in 1991. The European countries never sought to copy the actions of their allies across the Atlantic.

Why did the Europeans hesitate to approve the sale of products with sucralose? Scientists had noted that once ingested, sucralose had some dangerous metabolites. Biochemical reactions in the body could convert sucralose into heavy metals, arsenic and methanol.

Sucralose was discovered in 1976 by two refiners named Tate and Lyle. Those men arrange with Johnson and Johnson for the commercialization of sucralose. They wanted to put the chlorinated sucrose into many different food products.

Sucralose is the product of chlorination. Three chlorine molecules substitute for 3 of the hydroxyl groups on the sucrose molecule. Studies have shown that the ingestion of sucralose can lead an increase in the level of glycocylated hemoglobin. Such an increase indicates a decline in the body's ability to control diabetes.

Sucralose can be metabolized by microorganisms. Sucralose is mildly mutagenic. Lab animals fed sucralose have exhibited some unsettling symptoms. They have had a shrunken thymus, an enlarged liver and kidneys, atrophy of the lymph glands, atrophy of the follicles in the spleen and thymus, a decreased growth rate, a diminished red blood cell count, hyperplasia of the pelvis, aborted pregnancy and diarrhea.

While those major physiological changes might seem to represent the most alarming news about sucralose, a small biochemical change should receive the greatest concern. Sucralose in the body can alter the composition of certain chemicals. It can make it easier for those chemicals to latch onto the body's genetic apparatus.