Splenda

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Front of yellow Splenda consumer packet.

Splenda is a sucralose-based artificial sweetener marketed in North America.

Since its United States introduction in 1999, sucralose has overtaken Equal in the $1.5 billion artificial sweetener market, holding a 62% market share. According to market research firm IRI, as reported in the Wall Street Journal, Splenda sold $212 million in 2006 in the U.S. while Equal sold $48.7 million.

Its patent is owned by the British company Tate & Lyle. In April 2009, the International Trade Commission closed a patent infringement case that will permit Chinese manufacturers to produce copycat versions of Splenda products which will be sold under different brand names.

Cooking strategies

In 2008, McNeil Nutritionals in its Splenda granulated brand products recommended to home bakers to alter their recipes to replace one cup of sucrose with 3/4 cup granulated sucralose and 1/4 cup sucrose, in order to give a more authentic texture, moisture, and mouth feel to baked goods made with sucralose. The caloric load of traditional Southern sweet tea can be offset by substituting Splenda for 1/3 of the sugar ingredient typically used, thus adding a 2:1 sugar-splenda mixture that preserves the integrity of traditional recipes.

Energy (caloric) content

Though marketed in the U.S. as No Calorie Sweetener, Splenda products that also include bulking agents contain 12.4% the calories of the same volume of sugar. When sucralose is added to commercial products such as diet drinks, the bulking agent is not present and no caloric energy is added.

Although the "nutritional facts" label on Splenda's retail packaging states that a single serving of 1 gram contains zero calories, each individual, tear-open package or 1 gram serving contains 3.31 calories. Such labeling is appropriate in the U.S. because the FDA's regulations permit a product to be labeled as "zero calories" if the "food contains less than 5 calories per reference amount customarily consumed and per labeled serving." Because Splenda contains a relatively small amount of sucralose, little of which is metabolized, virtually all of Splenda's caloric content derives from the highly fluffed dextrose or maltodextrin bulking agents that give Splenda its volume. Like other carbohydrates, dextrose and maltodextrin have 3.75 calories per gram.

Health and safety regulation

Splenda usually contains 95% dextrose (the "right-handed" isomer of glucose) which the body readily metabolizes, combined with a small amount of indigestible sucralose. Sucralose is derived from table sugar (sucrose) through a patented, multi-step process that selectively substitutes three chlorine atoms for three hydrogen-oxygen groups on the sugar molecule. The tightly bound chlorine atoms create a molecular structure that is remarkably stable. Splenda is recognized as safe to ingest as a diabetic sugar substitute. Research suggests that the amount of sucralose that can be consumed on a daily basis over a person’s lifetime without any adverse effects is 15 mg/kg/day, or about 1 g for a 70 kilogram (150 lb) person. This is equivalent to about 75 packets of Splenda or the sweetness of 612 g or 2500 kcal of sugar.

Marketing controversy

In 2006 Merisant, the maker of Equal, filed suit against McNeil Nutritionals in federal court in Philadelphia alleging that Splenda's tagline "Made from sugar, so it tastes like sugar" is misleading. McNeil argued during the trial that it had never deceived consumers or set out to deceive them, since the product is in fact made from sugar. Merisant asked that McNeil be ordered to surrender profits and modify its advertising. The case ended with an agreement reached outside of court, with undisclosed settlement conditions. The lawsuit was the latest move in a long-simmering dispute. In 2004, Merisant filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau regarding McNeil's advertising. McNeil alleged that Merisant's complaint was in retaliation for a ruling in federal court in Puerto Rico, which forced Merisant to stop packaging Equal in packages resembling Splenda's. McNeil filed suit in Puerto Rico seeking a ruling which would declare its advertising to not be misleading. Following Merisant's lawsuit in Philadelphia, McNeil agreed to a jury trial and to the dismissal of its lawsuit in Puerto Rico. Currently, Splenda is advertised with the slogan, "It starts with sugar. It tastes like sugar. But it's not sugar."

In 2007, Merisant France prevailed in the Commercial Court of Paris against subsidiaries of McNeil Nutritionals LLC. The court awarded Merisant $54,000 in damages and ordered the defendants to cease advertising claims found to violate French consumer protection laws, including the slogans "Because it comes from sugar, sucralose tastes like sugar" and "With sucralose: Comes from sugar and tastes like sugar".

A Sugar Association complaint to the Federal Trade Commission points out that "Splenda is not a natural product. It is not cultivated or grown and it does not occur in nature." McNeil Nutritionals, the manufacturer of Splenda, has responded that its "advertising represents the products in an accurate and informative manner and complies with applicable advertising rules in the countries where Splenda brand products are marketed." The U.S. Sugar Association has also started a web site where they put forward their criticism of sucralose.

External links

• Tate & Lyle's Official Website for Sucralose
• Splenda truth - rebuttal site run by McNeil Nutritionals LLC, makers of Splenda
• FDA press announcement - FDA report on its approval of Splenda
• £97m Investment to Significantly Boost Splenda Sucralose Output (PDF) - describes new manufacturing plant in Singapore