Splenda (Sucralose) Isn’t Giving You Cancer

Why recent headlines about sweeteners are extremely misleading

Pictured: Might contain sucralose, but probably doesn’t — Diet coke is mostly sweetened by aspartame, but there are some versions that have sucralose instead. Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

Artificial sweeteners make headlines with an almost boringly predictable regularity. Whether it’s a scary story about heart disease, or some new fears that they’re secretly plotting to blow up Mt Rushmore, there’s always some new worry that makes headlines about sweet things that we put in our bodies.

The news recently is no different. Headlines across the globe have been screaming that sucralose, the artificial sweetener found in Splenda and some cans of Diet Coke, is genotoxic and giving everyone cancer. Apparently if you eat Splenda, rather than losing weight, you’ll degrade your insides into a sludge-like goop. Scary.

The stock photos for sludge were extremely unsatisfying, but here you go: sludge according to Unsplash dot com. Photo by Ivan Bandura on Unsplash

Fortunately for all of us who like artificially-sweetened things, the news is not nearly as scary as the headlines suggest. In reality, it’s extremely unlikely that these results mean much if anything for human health.

The Science

The study that has everyone in a tizzy is what’s known as lab-bench research, sometimes called basic science. The authors took…