Sucralose is an artificial sweetener that helps you cut out sugar from your diet.
While it’s taken a bad rap as a synthetic sweetener, the evidence for any safety concerns is somewhat weak, especially when compared to the well-documented negative health effects of plain sugar.
When it comes to replacing sugar, there are a lot of options out there, but for sucralose specifically, we’ve evaluated and ranked the ten best options on the market, and looked at some of the science behind the benefits and side effects of sucralose. Read on for more.
1. Microingredients Superfoods Pure Sucralose
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Microingredients Superfoods Pure Sucralose is a straightforward and simple sucralose sweetener.
This powder form sweetener has just one ingredient: sucralose. No preservatives or additives dilute the mixture, so it’s very well-suited for replacing sugar in your pantry.
2. BulkSupplements Sucralose
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Do you sugar in everything and can’t figure out how to replace it? BulkSupplements Sucralose is the way to go.
If you’ve been mixing honey, fruit juice, or brown sugar into your smoothies, coffee, or tea, and are just now realizing how much sugar you’ve been ingesting, try this bulk source of sucralose to wean yourself off sugar without giving up your sweet tooth.
3. JD Liquid Sucralose
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Among the liquid sucralose products, JD Liquid Sucralose is the best if you need a bulk source of liquid sucralose.
It’s great for rapid and efficient blending into smoothies, big batches of iced tea, and coffee.
It’s also free of sodium benzoate, a preservative that’s found in many other competitors. If you just use a few drops per day, this might not be the smartest option, but for bulk users, there aren’t any better options that come in liquid form.
4. Purisure Sucralose
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Purisure Sucralose is a good option if you want powder form sucralose but aren’t a bulk user.
This sweetener comes in a 50 gram resealable bag, so it’s good for occasional use and it still 100% pure and free of any additives.
5. SucraDrops Liquid Sucralose
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SucraDrops Liquid Sucralose is extremely convenient for adding sweetness to coffee and tea, since it’s already in liquid form.
There is sucralose dissolved in distilled water, along with some preservatives and stabilizers like potassium sorbate and sodium benzoate.
These last few ingredients won’t win over more stringent purists, but then again, there are better options for sugar replacements if you want natural options anyways.
6. Keto and Co Truly Zero
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Keto and Co Truly Zero make a tiny travel-sized bottle of liquid sucralose designed for keto dieters that can’t get by without a little sweetness in their coffee or tea.
The tiny travel size is great, though it’d be better if this sucralose solution didn’t rely on sodium benzoate as a preservative.
7. EZ-Sweetz
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EZ-Sweetz is a liquid sucralose supplement that comes in a discrete pocket-sized container that makes it well-suited for travel.
If you want to be able to add some sweetness to your morning coffee without adding real sugar, EZ-Sweetz is a good choice. Like many other liquid form sucralose sweeteners, it uses preservatives that some people may dislike, such as sodium benzoate.
8. NuSweet NuSugar
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NuSweet NuSugar is a liquid form sucralose sweetener that comes in a middle of the road size, at four ounces per bottle.
If you don’t need the large volume of bulk products, but also don’t want to go through so many of the travel-sized bottles offered by other competitors, it’s a decent pick.
Like many of its liquid sucralose competitors, NuSweet NuSugar relies on sodium benzoate as a preservative, so purists might want to opt for a different product.
9. Natural Mate Sweetener
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Natural Mate Sweetener is a bit unique in that it uses a blend of sucralose and erythritol. This gives it a sweeter profile, per unit weight, but erythritol does have some disadvantages.
Namely, in larger doses it can cause diarrhea and stomach pain in some people. As such, Natural Mate Sweetener is more apt for use as a coffee and tea sweetener, and not for things like baking.
10. Splenda No Calorie Sweetener
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Though Splenda No Calorie Sweetener is the original sucralose brand, it hasn’t quite held up over time.
Splenda isn’t 100% sucralose; it also contains maltodextrin, a starchy powder that adds a small but notable amount of carbohydrates to Splenda. For most people, there are better options than Splenda unless the taste is particularly appealing.
Sucralose benefits and side effects
Sucralose is an artificial sweetener with no calories.The sweet flavor of sucralose comes from the sugar molecule; hydrogen oxygen groups are replaced in a 3-part chemical process with chlorine atoms, and as a result, your body is not able to break down the sucralose molecule to burn as calories.
As the disastrous health effects of added sugar in the diet become more widely recognized, many people have turned to artificial sweeteners to satisfy the desire for sweet foods.
We’ll take a detailed look here at sucralose, including how it’s made, how it affects blood sugar, gut health and weight control.
Benefits
Sucralose is free of calories. Sucralose has been around since 1976, when it was discovered by a British researcher who incorrectly heard instructions given in the lab: instead of testing the substance he was working with, he tasted it, finding it very sweet.
Two major companies, Johnson & Johnson and Tate & Lyle, entered into a joint venture to develop the substance into a marketable product, which became available for purchase just before the turn of the century.
Sucralose is among the most popular artificial sweeteners you can buy today; thousands of food products worldwide contain sucralose, and it is claimed to be safe when used as a sugar substitute in both cooking and baking at home.
While many artificial sweeteners leave a bitter aftertaste, sucralose does not, which probably accounts for its popularity; it runs between 400 and 700 times sweeter than sugar. (1, 2, 3)
Sucralose can help with weight loss. Observational studies indicate the use of low-calorie or calorie-free sweeteners likely has little long-term effect on weight or body mass, but a range of different studies have come to different conclusions.
Some studies found no association between reduced body weight and the use of artificial sweeteners; other trials indicated there could even be a slight increase in body mass index (BMI).
A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials, which is considered the strongest way to aggregate study results, was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2010 and attempted to pool all results on low calorie sweeteners for weight loss (4).
The review found that low calorie sweeteners like sucralose “modestly but significantly” reduced outcomes like body weight, body mass index, fat mass, and waist circumference.
The authors explained the apparent disagreement between observational studies and randomized studies by the effects of confounding.
Observational studies can’t control for all other dietary factors, so people who use low calorie sweeteners like sucralose might, for example, be less likely to take a weight loss supplement, which could obscure the true relationship between
Sucralose does not affect blood sugar or insulin. Insulin and blood sugar levels are believed to be unaffected or minimally altered by sucralose, but experts say this may depend on whether or not you regularly include artificial sweeteners in your diet, as well as the variations of response found between individuals.
One study with 17 obese participants who were not accustomed to using sucralose indicated that insulin response increased by 20%, and blood sugar readings were elevated by 17%. (5)
Other trials with healthy subjects of normal weight who regularly used sucralose showed no changes in these biomarkers. (6, 7).
Side effects
The primary side effects of sucralose have to do with longer-term concerns related to its effect on your gut bacteria and your exposure to chemical created during high heating conditions (like baking products with sucralose).
The importance of gut bacteria and the inner environment of the entire digestive system on overall health has become the focus of more attention as researchers continue to learn about the role of these vital micro-organisms in various physical functions.
Not only are gut bacteria important in the digestive process, but they can also impact immune system function. Studies indicate that establishing and maintaining healthy gut bacteria cuts the risk of developing many chronic diseases as well. (8, 9)
One trial showed that the population of anaerobes, a type of gut bacteria that does not require oxygen to function, was reduced by 47% to 80% in lab animals consuming sucralose. (10)
During the course of this 12-week study, researchers found that other beneficial gut bacteria such as lactobacilli and bifidobacteria also decreased, while the harmful types of bacteria appeared to be less affected by sucralose consumption.
But the worst news could be that when tests were run on the animals’ gut environment three months after the experiment was finished, flora had not yet returned to normal.
Whether or not sucralose would impact human gut flora in the same manner has not yet been explored, but it’s certainly something to keep in mind when making a decision about using sucralose.
Splenda has been marketed as safe for high-heat applications like baking, but recent studies cast doubt on this statement.
It appears that separate ingredients in sucralose begin to break down when exposed to heat, leading to undesirable interactions. (12)
Researchers found that when Splenda was heated with glycerol (made up of fat molecules), harmful chloropropanols were formed; these compounds are thought to elevate the risk of developing cancer. (13)
To avoid the potential dangers of inducing decomposition of sucralose, you may want to consider baking at lower temperatures to decrease the chances of dangerous degradation; sticking with less than 350° F (120 C°) could circumvent this issue, but using sucralose to sweeten foods and beverages that don’t require heat may be the best choice until more research has been done. (14)
Recommended intake
Despite the mostly theoretical considerations above, the United States Food and Drug Administration considers sucralose “safe for general use,” meaning there aren’t any specific restrictions on how it can be incorporated into foods.
Because regular sugar does have quite a few negative side effects associated with chronically high intake, like fatty liver disease and type 2 diabetes, replacing much of your sugar intake with sucralose is a good place to start if you can’t figure out how to reduce your cravings for sweet foods and drinks.
Recap
Sucralose is a good all-around non-caloric sweetener for replacing sugar in your diet. It’s been associated with positive benefits for weight loss, decreasing fat mass, and decreasing waist circumference.
There are some theoretical concerns with using sucralose in high-heat situations, so avoiding sucralose for baking and other high-heat applications seems like a good precaution. keep in mind there are other low-calorie alternative sweeteners that are heat stable.
There is no clear evidence indicating that the use of sucralose is harmful, and if you enjoy the taste and feel confident consuming it, it may be a good strategy for reducing overall calorie intake.