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Mini: The Sweetness · Why We Do What We Do

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: You're listening to Why we Do what we Do. Welcome
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: to Why We Do what we Do Mini. I am
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: your host Abraham and I'm your osh Shane. We are
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  Speaker 1: a psychology podcast. We talk about the things that humans
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: and non human animals do, and we've been doing this
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  Speaker 1: for almost one hundred episodes now releasing these mini episodes.
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  Speaker 1: They're short and we talk about a thing and then
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  Speaker 1: we get out of there and it's like fifteen minutes.
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  Speaker 1: It's kind of the goal fifteen or less, and it's mini,
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  Speaker 1: so it's short, so we got to be fast before
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  Speaker 1: we dive into our topic. I'll quickly say, if you
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  Speaker 1: like what you hear and would like to support us,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: you can join us on Patreon, leave us a rating
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: and a review, like subscribe, tell a friend. I'll talk
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: about that more at the end of this discussion, but
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  Speaker 1: I think we're ready to jump into our mini unless
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  Speaker 1: there's anything you'd like to add.
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  Speaker 2: We have done so many minis that you could have
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  Speaker 2: zoomed at least almost three packs of Oreos, because every
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  Speaker 2: pack comes with anywhere between thirty six cookies to like
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  Speaker 2: about thirty six cookies, so you can if you ate
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  Speaker 2: an Oreo for every episode that we put out, you'd
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  Speaker 2: be on your third.
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  Speaker 1: Pack quantification in terms of oreos eating is really loving it.
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  Speaker 3: Well, we are talking about an episode about sweetness. I
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  Speaker 3: thought that was perfect.
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  Speaker 1: Oh that actually align.
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  Speaker 2: That wasn't my intention when I did that, and that
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  Speaker 2: worked out really well, So it did.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was some serendipity right there. I love it.
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  Speaker 1: So this is a mini about one of Jimmy Eat
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  Speaker 1: World's most successful hits, sweetness. No, just kidding, are you listening?
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  Speaker 1: Woa great great song. So I tried to work in
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  Speaker 1: a lyric from it as part of the title and
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  Speaker 1: have it still makes sense, but it's just too much.
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  Speaker 1: But someone, someone better than that at me, would would
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  Speaker 1: come up with something. We're actually talking about sweetness and
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  Speaker 1: so super Lows better known as Splenda is they report
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  Speaker 1: it being six hundred times sweeter than sugar, or so
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  Speaker 1: they say, But I was wondering, like what does that
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  Speaker 1: even mean?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's weird.
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  Speaker 2: So we have done a lot of gastro centered discussions,
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  Speaker 2: but eating is something that humans do like quite a bit.
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  Speaker 2: We're not going to explain why humans eat. That feels
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  Speaker 2: like a big episode for maybe a nutrition is to tackle.
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  Speaker 2: But here we are again talking about a very specific
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  Speaker 2: part of it. Yeah, maybe we'll do it at some point,
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  Speaker 2: but we will discuss what sweetness is and how we
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  Speaker 2: measure it.
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  Speaker 1: I actually thought this was great for a mini because
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  Speaker 1: it's just how you measure sweetness, and I think that
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  Speaker 1: that part of my assumption was right. But there's actually
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  Speaker 1: a lot to talk about with sugar and artificial sugar sweeteners.
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  Speaker 1: There might be a full length discussion about the prevalence
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  Speaker 1: and use of sugars, or several discussions from its history
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  Speaker 1: and like slavery and colonization, from the fact that sugar
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  Speaker 1: is used in places you might not expect, like vitamins,
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  Speaker 1: cough drops, and even mouth wash and toothpaste, to how
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  Speaker 1: it's made, or how artificial sweeteners came about, the sociled
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  Speaker 1: implications for how we create and consume food stuffs. There's
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  Speaker 1: actually like a lot inside of sugar alone that is
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  Speaker 1: an enormous amount to unpack.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, for today, we'll be sticking to just measuring sweetness.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, my wife's grandfather grew up working in sugarcane fields
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  Speaker 2: in Puerto Rico and like he actually like he he
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  Speaker 2: craves chewing on sugarcane. Wow, that's like one of his
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  Speaker 2: favorite things to do. Yeah, it's really interesting. So like
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  Speaker 2: there is probably there is probably a really cool history,
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  Speaker 2: like maybe that's our sweet of episodes this year, like
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  Speaker 2: literal Sweet of Episodes is about sugar in the history
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  Speaker 2: of sugar and all that. So anyway, we're gonna get
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  Speaker 2: a lot of puns out of this one, I think.
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  Speaker 2: Now there are claims about whether the experience of sweetness,
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  Speaker 2: low calorie or not, artificial or not, is a causal
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  Speaker 2: variable in the rise of obesity, or whether artificial sweeteners
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  Speaker 2: can instead be a solution to obesity.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's just another like discussion point where we could
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  Speaker 1: talk about sugar or sweetness. So there's a lot of
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  Speaker 1: a lot of avenues we could pursue, but we'll keep
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  Speaker 1: this discussion short and sweet.
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  Speaker 3: Yes, yes, I love it.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, we'll simply dive into the claims about how sweet
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  Speaker 1: things are and what that means. And if you're like me,
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  Speaker 1: you might hear a claim such as splenda is six
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  Speaker 1: hundred times sweeter than sugar and think, okay, so if
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  Speaker 1: I ate a teaspoon of sugar and that ate a
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  Speaker 1: teaspoon of splenda, would the splendid taste six hundred times sweeter.
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  Speaker 1: How would I even begin to quantify that? Although I
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  Speaker 1: might say that about something that is even detectively sweeter,
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  Speaker 1: just to be hyperbolic, like I've ate something like, oh,
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  Speaker 1: that is like six hundred times sweeter than sugar, regardless
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  Speaker 1: of how sweet it actually is. Otherwise, that's how I
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  Speaker 1: sort of thought about this. I'm like, what does that?
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  Speaker 1: What does it mean? It's six hundred times sweeter?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, that is a super interes question.
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  Speaker 2: Basically, they came up with a strategy that is much
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  Speaker 2: more objective than that. First, the baseline for sweetness is sucrose,
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  Speaker 2: which is a disaccharide carbohydrate that is fifty percent glucose
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  Speaker 2: and fifty percent fructose. You probably know this is sugar,
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  Speaker 2: and this is the archetype against which other sweetness is measured,
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  Speaker 2: So we always kind of go with this basic This
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  Speaker 2: is sugar, this is what it is, and then everything
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  Speaker 2: else is either sweeter or less more sweeter, less sweet
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  Speaker 2: than this thing.
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  Speaker 1: So default sugar. Second, what they do is they then
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  Speaker 1: assemble a panel of usually trained testers like tasters, sorry,
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  Speaker 1: taste testers, and they give them unadulterated water such as
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  Speaker 1: plain flat water, and then What they do is they
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  Speaker 1: add sugar or a subsweetener to several cups of water
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  Speaker 1: until about fifty percent of the tasters can tell that
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  Speaker 1: the water tastes different, not necessarily sweet, but they can
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  Speaker 1: tell there's something in there. Okay, now for sucrose, So
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  Speaker 1: regular sugar tasters start to tell that there's something different
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  Speaker 1: about the taste of water. At only aboutzero point five
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  Speaker 1: to one percent sucrose in the volume there, some put
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  Speaker 1: it as high as two percent. Is when people tell
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  Speaker 1: that people can tell the difference. But as you can tell,
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  Speaker 1: like one percent of a volume of water is not
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  Speaker 1: very much, and that's the point at which we start
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  Speaker 1: to tell that there's something different. A little bit more, honestly,
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  Speaker 1: not that much more. You get up into like soda
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  Speaker 1: is at ten percent, only ten percent, and then it's
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  Speaker 1: something like once you get to fifteen percent, you're in
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  Speaker 1: the territory of like syrups. Like that's how sweet it is. So, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: we are very sensitive too sweetness and can detect it
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  Speaker 1: at these at the low proportions here.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, like you know, twenty percent seems like that's a
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  Speaker 2: heavy dose of sugar. At fifty percent of podcast episodes, though,
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  Speaker 2: you usually get a dose of ads. All right, so
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  Speaker 2: we're talking about sugar. We're talking about at what point
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  Speaker 2: in time we start detecting sugar. So what we know
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  Speaker 2: is that sucross is detected about that that half percent
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  Speaker 2: of two percent mark. What they then do when they're
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  Speaker 2: kind of doing this is they add other sweeteners to
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  Speaker 2: the water and test how diluted that sweetener is compared
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  Speaker 2: to a given percent of sweetness achieved by sugar. So,
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  Speaker 2: for example, if one percent solution of sweetener is as
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  Speaker 2: sweet as ten percent solution of sucross, then that sweetener
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  Speaker 2: is said to be about ten times sweeter than sugar.
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  Speaker 3: So simple math if you will.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's basically like, we need only this amount of
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  Speaker 1: a sweetener to achieve what we would achieve in this
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  Speaker 1: amount of sugar. That's how much sweeter it is. So
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  Speaker 1: you can actually quantify that in a fairly straightforward way.
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  Speaker 1: So if a sweetener could be detected at one six
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  Speaker 1: hundredth the dilution of sugar, then that is said to
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  Speaker 1: be six hundred times sweeter than sugar. That's essentially the
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  Speaker 1: math that they use there. So essentially what that means
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  Speaker 1: is that much less of that sweetener is needed to
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  Speaker 1: create the sensation and taste of sweetness in food.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I feel like tasters probably detect splendor
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  Speaker 2: sooner though, because it just tastes sucky, like, it just
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  Speaker 2: tastes bad, Like they're like, they're not tasting the sugar,
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  Speaker 2: they're tasting the aspartain.
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  Speaker 1: I found some interesting information about that. Actually, maybe quick time,
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  Speaker 1: I'll give it to that.
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  Speaker 2: I didn't mean to spoil it for folks, Okay, so not.
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  Speaker 2: It's important to note here artificial sweeteners still have calories.
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  Speaker 2: They are just used in such an incredibly low quantity
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  Speaker 2: because of their extreme sweetness that their caloric presence is
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  Speaker 2: negligible even below a single calorie per serving. So technically,
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  Speaker 2: per us FDA regulations, they only have to be below
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  Speaker 2: five calories to be labeled zero calories. It's kind of
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  Speaker 2: like tic TACs, Like people don't realize that tictacs have calories,
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  Speaker 2: and they will eat a bunch of them and then
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  Speaker 2: start gaining weight because they're eating tiktacs all day.
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  Speaker 3: But they don't realize that.
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  Speaker 2: They're eating, like, you know, three hundred calories worth of
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  Speaker 2: tik TACs a day because they're such low calorie per tictac.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, if the per serving a product has less than
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  Speaker 1: five calories, they can put zero calories, and that's like
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  Speaker 1: technically a thing they're allowed to do. So just know
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  Speaker 1: that it's not that it's zero calories. They just need
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  Speaker 1: so little of it that it becomes negligible in the counting.
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  Speaker 1: But it can technically be up to about four calories
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  Speaker 1: per serving. But I thought it'd be kind of interesting
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  Speaker 1: to rank some of the sweeteners in terms of how
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  Speaker 1: sweet they are compared to sugar. So you have something
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  Speaker 1: called cyclamate and that is thirty to fifty times sweeter
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  Speaker 1: than sugar. Aspar tame which you described, which is also
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  Speaker 1: known as equal that's sort of the brand that U
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  Speaker 1: says that, and that is around one hundred and eighty
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  Speaker 1: to a casav very commonly cited two hundred times sweeter
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  Speaker 1: than sugar. And then you had Ace's soul fame potassium,
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  Speaker 1: which is also two hundred times sweeter than sugar.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Then you've got monk fruit, which is one hundred and
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  Speaker 2: fifty to two hundred and fifty times sweeter. You got
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  Speaker 2: stevia or stevia, which ranges from one hundred to three
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  Speaker 2: hundred times sweeter. And saccharin sweet and low, which is
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  Speaker 2: three hundred to seven hundred times sweeter.
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  Speaker 1: Then, as we mentioned, you've got sucralose, not su gross,
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  Speaker 1: but sucralose also known as splenda, and this is, as
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  Speaker 1: we mentioned, six hundred times sweeter than sugar. And you
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  Speaker 1: get up to six hundred times sweeter. And you know
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  Speaker 1: sacarn is seven hundred times sweeter, and you're like, wow,
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  Speaker 1: that is way sweeter than sugar. We're not done.
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  Speaker 3: Uh huh. We got more.
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  Speaker 2: There's alatain, which is two thousand times sweeter. You've got
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  Speaker 2: mea tame which is seven thousand to thirteen thousand times sweeter.
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  Speaker 2: And then you've got the deliciously named advent tame, which
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  Speaker 2: is a saggering twenty thousand times sweeter.
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  Speaker 1: That is a lot, So I did some math on this.
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  Speaker 1: By the way, you would only need about a tablespoon
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  Speaker 1: of this advent tame in a residential sized swimming pool,
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  Speaker 1: a residential like average sized swimming pool to be able
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  Speaker 1: to taste the difference in that a tablespoon like that's it,
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  Speaker 1: and you'd be able to taste it in that larger
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  Speaker 1: volume of water.
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  Speaker 2: I feel like the American marketing for that, like, you
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  Speaker 2: can't call it advantage and get people to like eat it.
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  Speaker 2: You have to call it something like mega sugar, like
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  Speaker 2: you know, like something really ridiculous to like get people
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  Speaker 2: on it, Like you know, like what you can't you
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  Speaker 2: can't just call it advantaine. People are gonna be like
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  Speaker 2: that sounds like a cabacoll.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, but if.
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  Speaker 2: You're like sugar ultra sugar is here and like you
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  Speaker 2: have a really cool commercial with it with like an
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  Speaker 2: eagle like firing off fireworks, Americans are gonna love that.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: True. I hadn't originally thought to include this, but yes,
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  Speaker 1: So different sweeteners do have different tastes to them. Some
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  Speaker 1: of them have a bitter aftertaste and metallic aftertaste. One
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  Speaker 1: of them apparently has like a licoricy a nie aftertaste.
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  Speaker 1: They are some of them will actually hit your tongue faster.
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  Speaker 1: So a normal sweet like a sugar, actually takes a
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  Speaker 1: couple seconds to like fully register, but some sweeteners will
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  Speaker 1: hit it like within one second, and some of them
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  Speaker 1: will actually take longer as well. Also the way that
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  Speaker 1: it feels in your mouth, as they describe like the
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: mouth feel texture of those sweeteners. People can tell the difference,
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  Speaker 1: and so it is like legitimately a different experience eating
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: other sweeteners that are not sugar. Yeah, some people like
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: it like and that's fine, but some people do struggle
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: with the difference in those flavors there.
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  Speaker 3: Sure, Yeah, that makes sense.
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  Speaker 2: I cannot stand asprotain flavors like that, like diet sugar
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  Speaker 2: flavor like it can't.
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  Speaker 3: It just sits with me weird and I just can't
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  Speaker 3: do it.
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  Speaker 1: There are some that I struggle with more than others.
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  Speaker 1: I forget which ones I don't like, like whatever they
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  Speaker 1: used in like sugar free chocolate. I never really cared
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  Speaker 1: for sure, but I don't mind diet sodas. And I
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  Speaker 1: found that munk fruit to be a very inoffensive flavor
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  Speaker 1: when added to things. So I don't know. That's my
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: experience with it at least makes sense, all right. If
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: you'd like to tell us your thoughts about sweeteners, in
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: particular how sweet they are, you can email us directly
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: at info at wwdwwdpodcast dot com or Richis on the
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: social media platform as we do look forward to hearing
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: from you. But if you like to support the show,
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: you can head over to Patreon. You'll get bonus content
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: add free content early episodes, and I will read your
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: name in the list of people who are supporters of
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: ours on our full length episodes, but for now I
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: will say thank you patron supporters. We do very much
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: appreciate you.
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: We love you so much.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much to my team of people writing
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: and fact checking from Shane and myself. Thank you for
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: recording with me today.
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: Shane, hey anytime.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: Our social media coordinator is Emma Wilson, and our audio
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  Speaker 1: engineer technician is Justin who is able to stitch together
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: a bunch of nonsense into a podcasts and we appreciate
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  Speaker 1: all of his wonderful work.
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he's the best.
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  Speaker 1: rating and a review that really does help get us
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• 13:34
  Speaker 1: Tell a friend, yes, please.
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: Do, We would love that. It'd be very sweet of
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: you to do that.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: Some of those things I said, we're close to sentences,
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: so hopefully they made some amount of sense. And thank
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: you all for sticking with me through this. Is there
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: anything you would like to add or anything that I
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: forgot before we wrap up.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: We got through this whole episode without making a follow
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: up boy reference we did.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: That's impressive. All right, follow up boy, that's our reference.
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, sugar, we're going down.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: That's right there you go. All right. Thank you all
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: for listening. This is Abraham and this is Shae. Why
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: We Do What We Do Mini is out.
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: Bye. You've been listening to Why We Do What We Do.
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: You can learn more about this and other episodes by
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: going to WWDWWD podcast dot com. Thanks for listening, and
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: we hope you have an awesome day