Last time I did a run of guest videos,
we had an enthusiastic young presenter talking about food science
and backing it up with an experiment.
Well, we are doing it again!
Alex, from Technicality Studios, it’s all yours.
This is Splenda.
It’s known as a zero-calorie sweetener or a healthy replacement for sugar.
“Splenda no calorie sweetener, with the original sugar-like taste you love and trust.”
Hold up.
Wait a minute.
How is this even possible?
Have you ever thought to yourself it’s a little strange that a food has zero calories?
Can any even have that?
Well, yes.
It’s theoretically possible.
Think of it this way.
If you, say, eat plastic, nothing really will happen.
Plastic has zero usable calories.
If you eat it, you can’t take energy from it.
Don’t eat plastic, by the way.
This is just an example.
So, before answering how many calories Splenda really has, if any,
we first have to answer if Splenda has any usable calories at all.
How do we do that?
Well, when we eat and digest sugar, or sucrose,
our body turns it into glucose and fructose.
Fructose is delivered to your liver and promptly turned into glucose,
and glucose is the stuff your body uses as energy.
To find out if there’s any calories in this packet of Splenda,
we have to find out if there’s any glucose in this packet of Splenda
and finding that’s easy, or at least,
it seemed easy after my chemistry teacher explained that to me like 20 times.
We’ll do two experiments.
For the first experiment, the control test,
we’ll dissolve 0.2 grams of sugar and 0.1 grams of an enzyme called invertase in water.
Enzymes are things that speed up chemical reactions, or catalysts.
Thus, the enzyme will quickly break down sugar into glucose and fructose.
In the second experiment, we’ll use the exact same procedure,
but change one material.
Instead of using sugar, we’ll use Splenda.
Let’s go to the lab.
Now that we’ve gathered all the materials, let’s get started.
Note to future editing self: this is Splenda.
This is sugar.
So, now I’m going to dissolve both of those things in water,
in these things, test tubes.
Now that we’ve dissolved everything in the test tube,
let’s put them in a warm water bath like this for 20 minutes.
The water should be about 37 degrees Celsius or body temperature.
This is the best temperature for the enzymes.
After letting it sit for 20 minutes,
I’m going to put in Benedict’s solution.
Benedict’s solution will tell us if there’s glucose in these test tubes.
Benedict’s solution is named after Stanley Rossiter Benedict, an American chemist,
and not Benedict Cumberbatch, a British actor.
This is a disappointment.
It’s now time to goggle up.
Now, when we put in the Benedict’s solution,
we’re going to replace the 37-degree water with boiling water.
Then, let’s add in a few drops and wait for the Benedict’s solution to do its thing.
So, we just learned that how Benedict’s solution works is basically it’s a spectrum,
right?
So, blue would be the least amount of glucose, no glucose.
And then there’s red, which would be the most amount of glucose,
that’s a lot of glucose.
Now, as you can see, these two are basically kind of orangey-caramel coloured,
but the one in the Splenda solution actually is a little darker and a little more intense,
if you look really closely.
So, that means there’s actually more glucose in the Splenda than the actual sugar.
Isn’t that crazy?
I mean, I was blown away.
Splenda, which is marketed as a zero-calorie alternative to sugar,
actually has more glucose than actual sugar.
Why?
Well Splenda’s most-used ingredient is dextrose.
You know what that is?
A fancy word for glucose.
So, how many calories are in these packets?
Four.
Four calories.
How do we know that?
Well,
I emailed Splenda Customer Service.
And they wrote back that there are four calories
in each single serve packet of Splenda no calorie sweetener
because that makes sense.
Side note here, one gram of sugar has four calories
and each packet of Splenda is about a gram.
But wait a sec.
If each packet has four calories,
why is Splenda allowed to say they have none?
That seems pretty sketchy.
It might seem sketchy, but it’s completely legal.
The Food and Drug Administration allows foods with fewer than five calories per serving
to be marketed as having zero calories down to the nutrition label.
That means you can’t trust any food that claims it has zero calories.
Well, now you know.
Until next time,
thank you so very much for watching.
Thank you to Tom for giving me the privilege of making a guest video.
Thank you to my chemistry teacher for staying late
and helping me with every little annoying thing I asked for.
DFTBA, and explore on!
Go subscribe to Alex’s channel!
Let’s be honest, he’s going to have my job in a few years,
so you’re just getting in early.
That is it for this run of guest videos.
Thank you very much for watching.
Thank you to all the presenters.
I’ll be back next time and, until then, I will see you on the Internet!