Artificial Sweeteners 3

One more thing. A lot of these artificial sweeteners were discovered by some guy accidentally tasting it. In chemistry, it's a very, very bad idea to taste whatever you're working on, unless you test it first. These men are lucky they didn't accidentally invent a new chemical weapon. Also, as they weren't actively trying to make a new artificial sweetener, their discoveries probably shouldn't be used as such. Just sayin'.

Artificial Sweeteners 2

SUCRALOSE

Sucralose, more commonly known as Splenda® is the most common artificial sweetener used in baking today. It was discovered in 1976 by a researcher who was asked to test a substance he was working on. This researcher thought his supervisor told him to taste the substance; when he did so, he discovered that it tasted extremely sweet.


Splenda® is said to be safe because the FDA says it doesn't break down at all. However, the inventors of Splenda® have actually stated that about 15% of sucrolose consumed is absorbed into the body and that they can't guarantee how much of chlorine out of that 15% remains in your system. 


Sucralose is part of a chemical group known as organochlorides. Organochlorides are a group of substances that contain carbon and at least one chlorine atom. Some common organochlorides include carbon tetrachloride, trichlorethelene, and methylene chloride. Each of these substances is deadly if ingested, and each contains at least one chlorine atom. Chlorine is like mother nature's assault rifle; a truly nasty element used in chemical weapons, bleach, hydrochloric acid (the most potent acid known to man), and insecticides. What sucralose really is is a sucrose molecule forced to give up three hydroxyl (oxygen and hydrogen) groups and replace them with chlorine, as is shown with this picture: 

I suppose I should explain exactly what these diagrams mean. These diagrams are a method of mapping out the atoms within a molecule and the bonds between them. Each atom is represented by a letter; the lines show which atoms are connected to each other. The 'O's stand for oxygen, the 'H's for hydrogen, and 'Cl' stands for chlorine. These diagrams don't show this very well, but you can see that the molecules are nearly identical, if you reverse one of drawings. 


"Hold on Eric, isn't chlorine in table salt?" Yes, table salt, sodium chloride, does contain chlorine. But salt isn't an organochloride; when sodium and chlorine combine to make salt, there is no carbon present, which means it isn't classified as an organochloride. Table salt and and sucralose are about as similar as a tree and a laptop computer. 


Our cellular metabolism, the process by which our bodies burn food for energy, is designed to use organic molecules containing carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, as well as a number of other nutritional elements. Since sucralose is an organic molecule it is the perfect system to deliver chlorine, which would normally pass through the digestive system, throughout our cells. Then chlorine acts as a preservative on your cells. This may sound like a good thing until you consider that preservatives work by killing all living cells to prevent bacterial decay; your cells will be perfectly preserved, but completely dead. 


Fortunately, our liver acts like airport security for your body. It prevents toxins like chlorine from killing our precious cells. But the liver can only handle so much, especially when your body's metabolism is already being attacked by that 15% of consumed sucralose we discussed earlier. Under great stress of this sort, the body's liver is destroyed; other internal organs follow. Under 'normal' consumption, the chlorine takes the slower route through the bloodstream. Organocarbons are extremely damaging to the brain and nervous system, exactly where a lot of your blood flows. This messes up your genetics and immune system, potentially causing cancer, immune system destruction, and birth defects. 

Artificial Sweeteners 1

Everybody knows that eating to much sugar leads to obesity and other health problems, right? Or does it? Are artificial sweeteners like Splenda® and that stuff they stick in diet pop actually better for you than regular sucrose sugar?

The answer to this question requires a bit of chemistry talk. Don't worry, I'll talk you through it! The term 'sugar' refers to any substance that has a sweet flavor, usually sucrose, lactose, and fructose. Sucrose is regular table sugar taken from a sugarcane plant, lactose is the sweet component of milk, and fructose is sugar found in fruit. Artificial sweeteners are sugars that are completely made within a laboratory, not created via a refining process like table sugar (sucrose) is.

Now for a bit of history regarding artificial sweeteners.

The first artificial sweetener is called sugar of lead. See, lead has a naturally sweet taste to it. Of course, I've never actually tasted it myself. As you might guess, sugar of lead is gained by cooking or eating food in/on lead dishes. As you also might guess, sugar of lead is just as toxic as regular lead. Don't try it. Please.

There have been a few other artificial sweeteners between the ban of sugar of lead and the use of modern sweeteners, but I won't go over them now. Most of them have been banned since they were discovered to cause cancer or other diseases.

The two biggest modern artificial sweeteners are aspartame and sucralose.

ASPARTAME

Aspartame was discovered by a chemist who was in the process of creating an anti-ulcer drug. Aspartame was a byproduct in his creation; he discovered its sweetness when he licked a finger he had unknowingly coated with aspartame. Aspartame isn't used for baking, as it breaks down and looses its sweetness when it hits about 30°C  (86°F). Instead, aspartame was recently used in cold beverages, like diet pop.

The FDA holds that aspartame is completely safe. This is true, until you consider the products from breaking down aspartame. Aspartame breaks down into aspartic acid, phenylalanine, and methanol.

Aspartic acid sounds bad, but it is just an animo acid found in our bodies and used to create other, essential animo acids. Phenylalanine is another animo that our body manufactures and uses naturally.

Methanol, on the other hand, is highly toxic in humans; as little as 10 ml (2.03 tsp) can cause permanent blindness, 30 ml (6.03 tsp) and above gradually increases the risk of fatality. In contrast, the minimum lethal dose of pure arsenic is about 70-200 ml (14.20-40.58 tsp). The FDA states that aspartame is completely safe; they are completely correct, unless it is heated to 30°C (86°F) and breaks down into toxic components. The internal human body temperature is about 37°C (98.6°F), which is well above the breakdown point of aspartame. After this breakdown occurs, toxic substances are absorbed into the bloodstream and carried straight to your brain, effectively acting like a neurotoxin. Since the FDA finally recognized the lethal effects of aspartame, they have removed it from the public eye and have mostly replaced it with sucralose.

Metric

I am going to use metric for all my posts. Even though I grew up with English and often still use it through habit, metric makes much more sense mathematically. Rather than having to memorize a series of arbitrary conversion ratios (e.g. 12 inches to the foot, 4 quarts to the gallon), I merely have to remember that there are 10 millimeters in a centimeter, 10 grams in a dekagram, etc. As for the names, I only have to memorize 13 prefixes for metric, but English requires the knowledge of at least 15 terms, plus whatever I couldn't think of off the top of my head. For all those who don't know metric, I will provide the appropriate English measurements in parentheses. 

For example, the moon is a maximum of about 406,700 km (252,712 miles) from the earth. So worry not, I won't have a post filled with terms you don't understand, at least not without explaining said terms.

Movie Misconceptions 2

Time for another common movie misconception! Fans of scifi movies and TV series will recall that spacecraft always have their engine running. You might say "Well, yeah Eric, if they stop their engines, they will stop moving." This statement is completely true when considering gravity and air resistance. See, according to Newton's first law, an object won't change velocity until acted upon by another force. This means that an object in motion will not slow down until something forces it to stop. When you roll a ball on the floor, it stops rolling after a few feet, assuming it doesn't hit a wall. This ball slows down and stops due to the forces of gravity and air resistance acting on it. A spaceship is subject to the same laws of physics; however, as I pointed out in the last post, gravity and air resistance aren't present in enough force in space to make a difference.

With this knowledge, we now know that a spacecraft won't slow down or speed up if the pilot shuts off the engines. But what would really happen if the engines are run constantly? The ship would continually accelerate until something, like a planet, forced it to slow down. I personally doubt that this ship will ever reach or surpass the speed of light, but that's another post. 

Movie Misconceptions 1

In many scifi movies, large spaceships are seen as slower and less maneuverable than their smaller counterparts. (Think Star Destroyer vs. Millennium Falcon.) When you really think about it, that doesn't make sense at all. The only time a smaller ship might be more maneuver when one is on-planet; as air resistance and gravity would have less of an effect on the smaller ship. Since there is no atmosphere in space, (that's why they call it 'space'. dur hur...) there isn't any air resistance, which is what makes large aircraft and watercraft slower and less maneuverable. Without gravity and air resistance, a large spacecraft should be just as fast and maneuverable as a small one with a comparable engine. As, according to Newton's first law, a body remains in a state of constant velocity until acted upon by an outside force. In our spaceship example, air resistance and gravity are the outside forces causing the larger vessel to loose speed and maneuverability. Since these forces aren't really present in space, the larger spacecraft will not loose speed or maneuverability. Quite the opposite in fact. A larger vessel can support a larger engine/generator/power supply thing, thus meaning it gains more thrust. Without the outside forces of air resistance and gravity acting against this thrust, the larger spaceship will possess an even greater top speed than the smaller vessel.

Hello World!

So, I figured I'd start a blog to rant on and share thoughts online or whatever. It'll probably end up that nobody else reads it and I'm talking to an empty room... *sigh*

Anyway, be prepared for topics on just about anything: from science to video game reviews and everything in between. Plus some stuff outside that domain. Basically whatever pops into my head; as long as I can turn into a  decent discussion. Worry not, you won't have to read about how hungry I am.