I've been thinking about switching to Splenda, but it's hard because a lot of the products out there that contain Splenda aren't very good. Because of this, I tend to call it Splenblah. However, your test with the lemonade gives me some hope.

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Since normal granulated sugar is sucrose, a disacharide of fructose and glucose, and since the fructose part is the only part that registers as sweet on our taste buds, you should hypothetically be able to make a lower calorie lemonade of approximately equivalent flavor by doing the following:



1) Start with a known mass of sugar, and make lemonade to taste. Re-weigh the sugar to find out exactly how much you used, in grams.



2) Using the molecular weight of sugar, find out how many moles of sucrose you used.



3) Calculate the mass of an equivalent number of moles of fructose, using the molecular weight of fructose.



4) Now, make a low-cal batch of lemonade with the same sweetness by using the amount of fructose you calculated in step 3. (Powdered crystaline pure fructose is sold in some specialty food stores. Berkeley Bowl sells it in bulk.)



Voila! lemonade with fewer calories and aproximately the same sweetness! (I have not personally tried this: this is simply my hypothesis. If anyone has the time and the money to do this, please report your findings. Thanks.)

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I've found that splenda, whilst in general being the best tasting artificial sweetener, does tend to enhance sour and acidic flavours, and not always in a good way.



this seems to be especially true with yoghurt where I have found that the more acidic brands of natural yoghurt taste okay when sweetened with sugar, but taste off when sweetened with splenda!

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Sugar is still the best in the long run. From what I understand, Splenda is a chemically altered form of sugar. Do you really wand to add another modified product to your diet?

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I've been making lemonaid with Splenda for a couple of years now. I think it's excellent.

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Scott,



A "modified product" is bad simply because it's modified? Caramel is modified sugar.



Why is sugar best in the long run?

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As a regular user of Splenda (I'm diabetic & the use of a sugar substitute isn't a choice for me) I have successfully used it in many recipes. One thing I would suggest, though, is if you will be using a large amount (more than a spoonful) buy a box of loose Splenda. This can be used as an equivalent of regular sugar.

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