Air Pollution » Air Quality and Public Health

The "zero-calorie" artificial sweetener has gone sour. The sweetener which became quite popular over the past decade has been found to increase blood sugar, making it anything but safe for diabetics, its USP.

Researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine have found that "zero-calorie" sucralose — marketed as splenda, sucra plus and said to be twice as sweet as saccharine and three times as sweet as aspartame — is not metabolically inert as was believed and instead raises blood sugar. It does so possibly by acting on receptors in intestines that mediate uptake of glucose into blood, thereby rendering them more efficient.