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Intersting though: sucralose is just normal saccharose, but with a hydrogen substituted with chlorine. One would think it should be the least dangerous one, due to being so similar to a natural molecule.


This is like changing the input to a hash function by just one and being surprised the output is so different.

That said, your confusion probably originated with Splenda’s “tastes like sugar ‘cause it’s made from sugar” marketing, which was ruled to be misleading.


No, |I do not have any confusion. Check the molecule yourself.


In the context of biochemistry, that's not really such a small change. It vastly modifies the reactivity of that site


Of course, I know that, otherwise it would not be so sweet.


I’m chemistry, tiny changes to structure or single atoms can produce drastically different properties.


Yet, medicines of similar structure and minor substitutions all have very similar profile, otherwise they would not havve been unified in different classes (say, benzodiazepines).


> One would think it should be the least dangerous one, due to being so similar to a natural molecule.

Research enantiomers and, more generally, chirality.

The laws governing Chemistry don't align well with the human intuitive understanding of similarity.


Chirality of both sugar and sucralose is exacty same.


“Natural” is marketing. It doesn’t mean things are not bad to regularly eat.

Cyanide is a natural molecule, and rattle snake venom is made of natural molecules.


Thank you for clarification, I did not know that.




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