The Biggest Scam Ever?

This product as a tabletop sweetener. It’s the leading sweetener in the US, selling about $250,000,000 annually just in the US.

“Made from sugar so it tastes like sugar.” That is 100% true. Each 1000mg packet of “Splenda No Calorie Sweetener” (NCS) contains 950mg of sugar (dextrose and maltodextrin). The other 50mg - 5% - is sucralose or “Splenda Brand Sweetener”, a mostly non-digestible, 0-calorie. artificial sweetener. “Splenda No Calorie Sweetener” is 95% sugar.

But wait, how can it be a “No Calorie Sweetener” if it’s 95% sugar? It’s actually not zero-calorie. It has 3.36 calories per 1000mg packet. The FDA allows a product with less than 5 calories ‘per serving’ to be rounded down and labelled zero calories. It’s up to the manufacturer to decide how much equals a ‘serving’

But wait, packets of sugar (sucrose) should then also be labelled zero calorie, right? No, a standard single serving packet of sugar in the US is 2800mg, which has ~11 calories. If it was a 1000mg serving like Splenda, it would have 3.86 calories, and could also be labelled zero-calorie.

To recap:

1g of sugar (sucrose) contains 100% sugar and is 3.86 calories

1g of Splenda NCS contains 95% sugar and is 3.36 calories, not zero calories

So you order a coffee with cream or milk. A 16oz Starbucks caffe latte has 190 calories unsweetened. With one 1g serving of Spenda that’s 193.36 calories. With one 2.8g serving of sugar that’s 201 calories. Using Splenda NCS has reduced the calorie count by 7.64 calories, or 3.8%. Almost nothing. That’s within the margin of error for the coffee calorie reporting. (Plus, to me, sucralose has a unpleasant aftertaste.)

How much does Splenda charge for 95% sugar, 5% sucralose, compared with the cost of 100% sugar?

…and per serving…

So, in essence, little to no calorie savings, considering even on a diet people consume 1,000+ calories a day, a funny taste, and 2.5 times the cost.