Sugar substitutes: no affection for this confection.(Splenda)(Evaluation)

If you're a calorie counter or otherwise watch your sugar intake, Splenda, a new sugar substitute, may sound like your grail. The sweetener has just 2 calories per teaspoon, and as such it's allowed to be called "no calorie"; sugar has 15 calories per teaspoon. Splenda is made of sucralose, which comes from sugar, and thus has sidestepped the health issues that have been raised about some other artificial sweeteners. It's supposed to taste like sugar, measure like sugar, and be used like sugar--even for cooking and baking.

We used Splenda to sweeten iced tea and to make cookies, chocolate cake, and icing; trained taste testers then sampled those foods and some others we made using sugar, Equal Spoonful (aspartame), and Sweet 'N Low (saccharin).

Iced tea. We had the best results with Splenda when we used it to sweeten Lipton Cold Brew Blend iced tea, comparing it with Equal, Sweet 'N Low, and sugar. Both Splenda and Equal tasted close to sugar. But while sugar costs a penny or two per tablespoon, Splenda and Equal cost 5 to 7 cents per comparable serving. Sweet 'N Low, 1 cent per serving, made the tea taste of ...