"measures like real sugar": sucralose tends to come in three forms. The one that measures tablespoon-for-tablespoon like real sugar for sweetness is diluted something by something like 4 orders of magnitude, and it's that 99.99% not-sugar that gives it the funny taste. There's a less-diluted one that is easier to measure with a conversion factor like you mentioned, and then the pure form - which almost no manufacturers use - is an ultra-sweet liquid with absolutely no aftertaste at all, because it's *just* the actual sucralose molecule and nothing else. Real sugar isn't all sucrose, it's just honest sucrose mixed in with a bunch of naturally occurring fillers (well, natural to varying degrees, but for the most part) that you grew up with, so they don't have what you can recognize as an aftertaste. The fructose/glucose/sucrose mix in cane or table sugar is very similar that in high-fructose corn syrup, yet one tastes distinctly different from the other.
As for evolving to eat sucrose, fructose, natural fats, etc. rather than their synthetic siblings: true, though the inane quantity of them that's available now and the built-in dopamine pleasure rewards for eating them makes it easy to over-consume. Many people would rather over-consume, reap the pleasure rewards, and figure out a sneaky way to circumvent the consequences. (As an aside, the quantities in which you evolved to consume those things are WAY lower than those in which they are available now - substituting the fake sugar that you don't actually digest isn't going to cheat you of the opportunity to practice processing the natural stuff, just mitigate the quantities. Then again, you eat much more health-consciously than most.)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
zvi and
no subject
Date: 2010-08-04 12:55 pm (UTC)As for evolving to eat sucrose, fructose, natural fats, etc. rather than their synthetic siblings: true, though the inane quantity of them that's available now and the built-in dopamine pleasure rewards for eating them makes it easy to over-consume. Many people would rather over-consume, reap the pleasure rewards, and figure out a sneaky way to circumvent the consequences. (As an aside, the quantities in which you evolved to consume those things are WAY lower than those in which they are available now - substituting the fake sugar that you don't actually digest isn't going to cheat you of the opportunity to practice processing the natural stuff, just mitigate the quantities. Then again, you eat much more health-consciously than most.)