the things you learn....
Jun. 10th, 2004 02:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smibbowhen you're curious.
We offer Splenda to our customers. Now, knowing that Splenda has zero calories and the tagline is "tastes like sugar, because it IS sugar!" made me assume something. I am actually not really in the habit of making gross assumptions, but there you are. I assumed Splenda was left handed sugar. I was completely in error on that. I came home after discussing Splenda with a customer at work who basically asked/challenged me to find out what Splenda is and how it works. Not only did I find out the answers to those questions, I found an update on the status of left-handed sugar. As I remembered (correctly, in this case) left-handed sugar is prohibitively expensive to produce. HOWEVER, the man who pioneered it's "discovery" and development has stumbled upon something ever better than left-handed sugar: tagatose. Tagatose is not left-handed (making it affordable) but it is apparently close enough to a left-handed sugar that the body does not process it all - thus making it's caloric content about 75% smaller than table sugar. Tagatose's sweetening power is only slightly lower than table sugar and it may actually have some health benefits that are theoretically sound. Tagatose is a derivative of lactose production and the by-product of it's creation is glucose which also lowers the expense of production by having a saleable by-product.
From what I've seen, tagatose could be the best thing to happen to diets since the discovery of calories! Tagatose really is natural, whereas Splenda is sugar that has been subject to a chemical replacement - chlorine to be exact. Saying that Splenda is sugar is like saying you should drink out of the pool. The idea of consuming chlorine doesn't give me the good kind of goosebumps frankly, but according to the science I've read, tagatose really IS natural and really IS sugar - another kind of dairy sugar to be more precise.
So I was wrong, and when I see the customer again I will have to tell him... but honestly? I'm excited, because I get to tell him about something that hasn't "hit" yet and this customer is obviously like me: whether or not he cares about sugar substitutes, he'll LOVE hearing about the new science!
We offer Splenda to our customers. Now, knowing that Splenda has zero calories and the tagline is "tastes like sugar, because it IS sugar!" made me assume something. I am actually not really in the habit of making gross assumptions, but there you are. I assumed Splenda was left handed sugar. I was completely in error on that. I came home after discussing Splenda with a customer at work who basically asked/challenged me to find out what Splenda is and how it works. Not only did I find out the answers to those questions, I found an update on the status of left-handed sugar. As I remembered (correctly, in this case) left-handed sugar is prohibitively expensive to produce. HOWEVER, the man who pioneered it's "discovery" and development has stumbled upon something ever better than left-handed sugar: tagatose. Tagatose is not left-handed (making it affordable) but it is apparently close enough to a left-handed sugar that the body does not process it all - thus making it's caloric content about 75% smaller than table sugar. Tagatose's sweetening power is only slightly lower than table sugar and it may actually have some health benefits that are theoretically sound. Tagatose is a derivative of lactose production and the by-product of it's creation is glucose which also lowers the expense of production by having a saleable by-product.
From what I've seen, tagatose could be the best thing to happen to diets since the discovery of calories! Tagatose really is natural, whereas Splenda is sugar that has been subject to a chemical replacement - chlorine to be exact. Saying that Splenda is sugar is like saying you should drink out of the pool. The idea of consuming chlorine doesn't give me the good kind of goosebumps frankly, but according to the science I've read, tagatose really IS natural and really IS sugar - another kind of dairy sugar to be more precise.
So I was wrong, and when I see the customer again I will have to tell him... but honestly? I'm excited, because I get to tell him about something that hasn't "hit" yet and this customer is obviously like me: whether or not he cares about sugar substitutes, he'll LOVE hearing about the new science!
