I remember one story that made it into the Darwin Awards where one scientist liked dipping his chewing gum in citric acid whenever the gum starting losing flavor. One day, he had an open container of cyanide salts on his desk instead...
+NNJ Studios people don't notice the difference between *its* and *it's* ( I didn't untill reading this comment) and since language isn't law, but a naturally evolving element of humanity, soon it will both be correct. its allways refers to a property of something (like in this case) and it's is a subtraction of it has (i.e. "*it's* (it has)been a good day for science" or "look at the furr of my cat, "its" hair (the hair of it) is stripey so it must be a female") (ps did need to say naturally or natural? idk & idc really)
If someone is wondering... just because sucralose has chlorine does not mean it is toxic. Chlorine by itself it toxic, and also apart of SODIUM CHLORIDE, or table salt. So you already ingest it a lot in your everyday proceedings.
I´m not chemophobic. Actually, I try to fight chemophobia. But, let´s say, I´m not that happy when I knew about chlorine on sucralose. The point is not the element by itself, but the remembrance of chlorinated pesticides. But anyway, if after passing all tests and regulations it was approved, let´s presume it´s safe.
Still one of my absolute all time favorite informative videos ever, the others (in no particular order) are another scishow about the most dangerous chemicals and a Vsauce about De Ja Vu.
You forgot sodium cyclamate. It may still be banned in the US, but it's sold in other countries under names like Sucaryl (or Sugar Twin in Canada), often in a mix of 10 parts cyclamate to 1 part saccrine.
I love this video, it's still one of my all-time favorite educational/informative videos on the internet! This and the episode on the 5 most dangerous chemicals I just love to watch on occasion! Speaking of which, looking in the comments, I said almost the same thing 1 and 2 years ago. Am I accidentally making a tradition of viewing these two videos and commenting my love for them once a year?
You missed out on Xylitol. A natural sweetener like stevia, that I can't tell the difference from sugar like other sweeteners. And it actually helps rebuild teeth - stopping cavities.
PaganArwen actually, Xylitol simply neutralizes some of the acidity caused by bacteria breaking down sugars. Don't let that stop you from buying xylitol gum as a preventative measure against cavities though, because it can be very effective for maintaining healthy enamel.
*watches video, pouring coke zero that rarely drinks.* *sips it* "although, some artificial sweeteners are tested that it gives cancer to lab rats" *stays silent for a while - regretting* "Moderation is the key." Okay.
Thank-you so much for this!!!! As an ND, I talk about this with my patients all the time. It's so awesome to now have a video I can share with them. You're awesome!
Saccharin doesn't cause cancer. It certainly does cause bladder cancer in rats, but this is one of those cases where a poor animal model was chosen. The reason for this, as it turns out, is that rats have different environments in their bladders than humans do. As a result of different proteins and pH they produce things in conjunction with saccharin which cause damage to the lining of their bladder; repeated damage to your bladder (or anything else) will raise cancer risk due to more cell division and other factors. As it turns out, this does not happen in humans, so saccharin is, as far as we can tell, harmless. This is hardly the only chemical compound where some animal models are poor choices; humans eat all sorts of things which cause toxic effects in critters.
No way is this video almost 10 years old! I remember it being released! Once again, I make my majestic biennial migration to this and the video on the 5 most dangerous chemicals ever created, as well as the Vsauce video on Deja Vu! Absolute classics, some of my all-time favorites on UA-cam!
He brought up the fact that cats can't taste sweet, yet not that they CAN taste ATP. I feel like that information would have been beneficial to the video.
If your in a hurry: 4:10 Sucrose (sugar) 1x sweet as sugar 4:25 Stevia (the plant) 300x sweet as sugar 5:02 Saccharin (artificial) 200x sweet as sugar 6:06 Aspartame (artificial) 200x sweet as sugar 6:41 Sucralose (Sugar and Chlorine) 600x sweet as sugar
Brilliant, I loved it, I discovered a ton of things I didn't know and more importantly you got me thinking twice about my daily choices. Oh well, you often do. Great great channel really, keep it up man.
I think it would be good for you to do a show about Diabetes, Type I and II and how the body processes sugars, carbs, and proteins. I work for an endocrinologist and there are several misconceptions about diabetes. I love your videos and think a show on diabetes would be a great reference for my patients.
aspartame turns into formaldehyde when it's at a temperature of 30 degrees celsuis or higher. For those of you who don't know, our body temperature is around 37 degrees celsius and formaldehyde is often used to preserve dead bodies.
Well, thanks for reminding me that TaB exists. Now I'll be craving it all week. I sort of wished he'd gone into the fact that they cut the sweeteners with other things more. No matter how I explain it, my mother still believes that a packet of saccharin is 300x sweeter than a packet of sugar.
Great video Hank! Could you also make one about the laboratory burger? How is it made, could we also do it with chicken or even dinosaur? Those kinds of questions. Cheers!
Excellent video! only one comment: Sucrose is Glucose-Fructose while Sucralose (Splenda) is Galactose-Fructose. It's a different disaccharide and it can only be made artificially - it doesn't exist in nature as you assertively mention none compound in nature is chlorinated. If possible a correction should be made.
About the last warning on the video about the calorie count on the sweet foods, the interesting thing is that in this year it has been found that we have another kind of taste receptor for carb, and with that, we can't trick our brains into swallowing low calories food, as it knows we are not getting enough energy, and when we eat proper food, it also knows.
I would like to see more of the actual science articles rather than news articles. As a science student these little info snippets are fun and all but I would like to take a bowl of popcorn to these actual science reports for the actual studies.
@7:08 "... then as legend has the student was asked to "test" the product but misheard, tasted it instead!" imagines the scenario - bursts out laughing!!! XD
Sweet topic. It was reviewed in the last NatGeo Mag. Among other things, it discussed how sugar came into our society historically, and evolutionary speaking. Keep researching, this is a long story and a very important one...
Brown sugar was previously unrefined sugar, or just partially refined. Today it's completely refined sugar where they ad back the stuff lost in the refining process...
They can control moisture levels and crystal size to make most sugars, the others are ground to size. The colour is dirt. Shocking trip to the refinery at age 6, white only for me ever since!
I have two questions. Feel free to chime in if you know! First, Hank kept giving examples of how much sweeter some artificial sweeteners are to sugar, "sucralose is 600 times sweeter." What is the science of measuring sweetness? How would one even get the number 600? Second, what does the manufacturer cut stevia with to lessen the sweetness? I hope I explained my questions well enough to be answered. Thanks to anyone that can help!
Just a blind guess here, but maybe it's similar to how we measure how spicy a chilli pepper is? a ghost pepper is more than a hundred times(if i remember correctly) more spicy than Jalapenos, and we don't burn alive eating a ghost pepper so maybe 600 times higher in a scale of some sort? kinda like Scoville scale for spicy level.
Stevia extract (when not used as a liquid) is cut with dextrose and/or maltodextrin. Coca-Cola's "Truvia" is different. Since they could not patent the stevia plant itself they created a patentable process to isolate one of its components. This is then cut with erythritol, a sugar alcohol derived from corn. Unfortunately the part of the stevia plant they isolated has a bitter aftertaste, so vanllin is added to mask it. Fine for cola but it leaves a noticeable artificial vanilla flavor in other foods.
I'm just guessing here but I think it has something to do with bliss point and the average quantity it takes for the population to get there. Honestly- I'm just talking out my ads. Does anyone have an actual answer?
There's a device called a refractometer that determines the sugar content of liquids. www.homebrewstuff.com/refractometer-how-to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brix It's a good idea to know how much sweeter an additive is than sucrose (which is the standard/control the other sweeteners are compared to). Knowing that sucralose is 600x sweeter will make you, or at least should make you, use less because it takes a smaller amount of sucralose to equal the same sweetness as sucrose.
The only way to compare them is mass human testing. Researchers increase the concentration of a sweetener until *any* change in taste is detectable by subjects. That is called the "threshold value" and is what they use to compare sweetness.
at the BBC series Food Hospital they say that also when you eat something with a sweetener, your brain might expect the calories and if it doesnt get it, it makes you long for calorific food more
Right. Lasting soreness is a good sign you worked out enough that your body will be triggered to repair and generate new muscle. The "burn" is only a good sign you're working hard though, not muscle build up. It's merely that your muscle was worked enough that all oxygen was used for aerobic energy production and, to keep moving, the cells switched to anaerobic energy production which doesn't use oxygen, but ends in by products that need to be dealt with afterwards, including lactic acid.
I'm interested in understanding why many people believe there is a link between aspartame and MS. I read something about aspartame increasing free radicals & oxidation...
In terms of meat and meat products? Varies with the person, location, expenditure ect. But roughly; a serve of lean red meat 2-3 times a week, a serve of lean poultry/seafood 3-4 times a week, 2-3 serves of dairy products (milk, cheese, yogurt) a day. Eggs can also be used to replace some of your intake of protein sourced directly from animals.
Great video Hank, thank you. Only thing I want to say it that I would have liked if you suggested looking at what other regulatory bodies have to say about artificial sweeteners, as not everyone lives in the US or feels confident about the FDA maintaining a independent science based position.
Hank, learning from you makes me happy.
Now I wonder how many chemists have died from licking their fingers..
scientist 1 :Hmm tastes good i guess i found something
scientist 2: hmm he made it i need to do Thé same * died by acid :D
I hear the inventor of hydrofluoric acid used to taste his discoveries. Lol
Key words: Used to.
I remember one story that made it into the Darwin Awards where one scientist liked dipping his chewing gum in citric acid whenever the gum starting losing flavor. One day, he had an open container of cyanide salts on his desk instead...
Ikr. 😂
4:03 can't believe SciShow misused an apostrophe !!
+NNJ Studios Yes, it is incorrect. They should have used "its" because "it's" is a contraction for "it is", so the possessive form has no apostrophe.
+Nicholas Audinet
i once argued the same point with a teacher in my elementary school for like twenty minutes.
+NNJ Studios people don't notice the difference between *its* and *it's* ( I didn't untill reading this comment) and since language isn't law, but a naturally evolving element of humanity, soon it will both be correct. its allways refers to a property of something (like in this case) and it's is a subtraction of it has
(i.e. "*it's* (it has)been a good day for science" or "look at the furr of my cat, "its" hair (the hair of it) is stripey so it must be a female")
(ps did need to say naturally or natural? idk & idc really)
They’re expertise is in science, not grammar.
If someone is wondering... just because sucralose has chlorine does not mean it is toxic. Chlorine by itself it toxic, and also apart of SODIUM CHLORIDE, or table salt. So you already ingest it a lot in your everyday proceedings.
I´m not chemophobic. Actually, I try to fight chemophobia.
But, let´s say, I´m not that happy when I knew about chlorine on sucralose.
The point is not the element by itself, but the remembrance of chlorinated pesticides. But anyway, if after passing all tests and regulations it was approved, let´s presume it´s safe.
Still one of my absolute all time favorite informative videos ever, the others (in no particular order) are another scishow about the most dangerous chemicals and a Vsauce about De Ja Vu.
You forgot sodium cyclamate. It may still be banned in the US, but it's sold in other countries under names like Sucaryl (or Sugar Twin in Canada), often in a mix of 10 parts cyclamate to 1 part saccrine.
I love this video, it's still one of my all-time favorite educational/informative videos on the internet! This and the episode on the 5 most dangerous chemicals I just love to watch on occasion!
Speaking of which, looking in the comments, I said almost the same thing 1 and 2 years ago. Am I accidentally making a tradition of viewing these two videos and commenting my love for them once a year?
You missed out on Xylitol. A natural sweetener like stevia, that I can't tell the difference from sugar like other sweeteners. And it actually helps rebuild teeth - stopping cavities.
Too bad this artificial sugar kills dogs and bids like flies with a fly swatter. Also a natural laxative, fun at both ends. :-)
PaganArwen actually, Xylitol simply neutralizes some of the acidity caused by bacteria breaking down sugars. Don't let that stop you from buying xylitol gum as a preventative measure against cavities though, because it can be very effective for maintaining healthy enamel.
So next time I'm in chemistry I should lick my fingers?
Yes?
Ortun Ok. Tastiness, here I come!
+AgentWashingtub Unless it's Barium Chloride. That stuff is the furthest thing from tasty (if you're a PTC taster like me that is).
I once licked my finger, hours after working with picric acid in the chemistry lab. I still remember the unbearably bitter taste
lick lick lick
This is one of my favorite episodes. so much to learn from it that affects you like 30 times a day.
*watches video, pouring coke zero that rarely drinks.* *sips it* "although, some artificial sweeteners are tested that it gives cancer to lab rats" *stays silent for a while - regretting* "Moderation is the key." Okay.
Thank-you so much for this!!!! As an ND, I talk about this with my patients all the time. It's so awesome to now have a video I can share with them. You're awesome!
Saccharin doesn't cause cancer. It certainly does cause bladder cancer in rats, but this is one of those cases where a poor animal model was chosen.
The reason for this, as it turns out, is that rats have different environments in their bladders than humans do. As a result of different proteins and pH they produce things in conjunction with saccharin which cause damage to the lining of their bladder; repeated damage to your bladder (or anything else) will raise cancer risk due to more cell division and other factors.
As it turns out, this does not happen in humans, so saccharin is, as far as we can tell, harmless. This is hardly the only chemical compound where some animal models are poor choices; humans eat all sorts of things which cause toxic effects in critters.
Just saying it wastn the first artificial sweetener, that would be sugar of lead
yeah and in that study they gave the rats 10% of their body weight in saccharine !
No way is this video almost 10 years old! I remember it being released!
Once again, I make my majestic biennial migration to this and the video on the 5 most dangerous chemicals ever created, as well as the Vsauce video on Deja Vu! Absolute classics, some of my all-time favorites on UA-cam!
He brought up the fact that cats can't taste sweet, yet not that they CAN taste ATP. I feel like that information would have been beneficial to the video.
I LOVE SCI SHOW EPISODES ABOUT FOOD!!! Nerdy food facts and science make my day!!!!! Thank you so much!!!
For all we know rich red meat may taste 'sweet' to a carnivores brain. In any case they probably have a good sensation for their prize foods.
This is very true, also I cannot believe the age of this comment.
If your in a hurry:
4:10 Sucrose (sugar) 1x sweet as sugar
4:25 Stevia (the plant) 300x sweet as sugar
5:02 Saccharin (artificial) 200x sweet as sugar
6:06 Aspartame (artificial) 200x sweet as sugar
6:41 Sucralose (Sugar and Chlorine) 600x sweet as sugar
I just use honey as a sweetener. Good with tea and coffee.
make sure it’s raw
One of my favourite series! Thank you, so informative.
tested and approved by the fda hahahahahaha
tasted
Jerónimo Barraco Mármol What.
Nothing important. Just a stupid word play.
I think this might be my favorite SciShow episode yet! SO INFORMATIVE! Thanks Hank.
The picture of stevia isn't yerba mate?
Mierda que se parece a la que uso yo, aguante la taragüi sin palo vieja, no me importa nada
Viendo imágenes de "dried stevia leaves" no se parecen en nada a la imagen, así que sí jajaj, buscaron "paraguay dried leaves" XD
Brilliant, especially the summary about moderation which seems to be the simplest of approaches that most ignore.
Whole world is a wanker factory ?
Lol
Bumbags.Bums.Bums mean butt in American English.But it is better than the F word used for 'Bum'bags.
WONKA Factory like Willy Wonka .
This is one of if not the best episode yet.
Well, glad I can't stand artificial sweeteners. Now I'm kinda curious though, what in hell is brown sugar?
ViraIshnia Seriously, why don't you Google? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_sugar
It's sugar mixed with molasses
+Anal “Negro” Avacado esse nome tio (aquela carinha)
poop of pinguins. they filter and centrifuge it which gives us brown sugar
yumm...sweets.
Brilliant, I loved it, I discovered a ton of things I didn't know and more importantly you got me thinking twice about my daily choices. Oh well, you often do. Great great channel really, keep it up man.
I think it would be good for you to do a show about Diabetes, Type I and II and how the body processes sugars, carbs, and proteins. I work for an endocrinologist and there are several misconceptions about diabetes. I love your videos and think a show on diabetes would be a great reference for my patients.
Keep the good info coming, thank Hank you are super!☺
6:15 Best sentence I've heard in awhile.
I don't know why but the way he talks is so engaging!
hey , ur team work is excellent, & the information u r giving is v.nic :) really good job.
Very interesting topic.Thanks to SciShow for being awesome!
I have learned more from this show in the past week than I have in the many years of attending school.
This pleases me.
Pretty thorough breakdown there Hank, thanks, informative as always
Great vid, really enjoyed that one. Thx SciShow!
aspartame turns into formaldehyde when it's at a temperature of 30 degrees celsuis or higher. For those of you who don't know, our body temperature is around 37 degrees celsius and formaldehyde is often used to preserve dead bodies.
Well, thanks for reminding me that TaB exists. Now I'll be craving it all week.
I sort of wished he'd gone into the fact that they cut the sweeteners with other things more. No matter how I explain it, my mother still believes that a packet of saccharin is 300x sweeter than a packet of sugar.
I love that the videos are getting longer.
Aww poor kitties :,( I feel so bad for them
Another great episode. Thanks, sci-show.
Thank you for expressing concern over the current status of my tongue posession ☺
Its funny going back in time and watching 7-Years-Ago-Hank talk cause he almost seems drunk compared to today's videos
wow, can not believe what I just listened it still it is so informative!!
Great video Hank! Could you also make one about the laboratory burger? How is it made, could we also do it with chicken or even dinosaur? Those kinds of questions. Cheers!
i love u hank green. how many lives will live longer just over this one video.
Excellent episode. I applaud thee.
Nice critique, Hank. Very objective and rational.
“Just a dab’ll do ya”
Best. Line. Ever.
Lactic acid build up is the "burn" while working out. The prolonged soreness afterwards is microtrauma damage to the muscle.
Note: Most of these 0calorie sugar subsitutes in their cut form are -low- calorie because of the products used to bulk them up
This video in incredibly informative. It makes me wonder about the foods I eat. Amazing video!
Excellent video! only one comment: Sucrose is Glucose-Fructose while Sucralose (Splenda) is Galactose-Fructose. It's a different disaccharide and it can only be made artificially - it doesn't exist in nature as you assertively mention none compound in nature is chlorinated. If possible a correction should be made.
that was from memory. you can get complete proteins from plants as long as you eat a variety of them.
Never really knew about the ties with Saccharin and Cancer. Great video, once again!
Just a dab will do ya. Love it, really dapple.
This might sound weird, but I gotta tell ya: Hank, I l-o-v-e LOVE the way you talk. Any pointers for presenting?
You guys should do an episode on why flavors are sometimes really intense/painful
"So you've got your tongue, or at least I hope you do"
I almost spit out my drink 😂
Many kinds of brown sugar are refined sugar that then have molasses added to it. This helps homogenize the end product.
About the last warning on the video about the calorie count on the sweet foods, the interesting thing is that in this year it has been found that we have another kind of taste receptor for carb, and with that, we can't trick our brains into swallowing low calories food, as it knows we are not getting enough energy, and when we eat proper food, it also knows.
I would like to see more of the actual science articles rather than news articles. As a science student these little info snippets are fun and all but I would like to take a bowl of popcorn to these actual science reports for the actual studies.
What a science presenter! Grate!!!
that was an awesome episode
This was a good episode
Very informational. Thank you for making me a little smarter this morning!
"will the diet cola give you the cancer; scishow got the answer", hank just make an entire episode of sweet rhymes like that with that funky way
great episode!
@7:08 "... then as legend has the student was asked to "test" the product but misheard, tasted it instead!"
imagines the scenario - bursts out laughing!!! XD
This was a two thumbs up contribution. Also, you spoke a little slower at some point, which made it more pleasant to listen, too :)
I have been telling my mother these things about her diet soda for years, but, to no avail....
Thanks Hank! I tried to explain this to a friend of mine, with no success. This was very succinct!
this is so cool, thank you, I always wondered how sugars and sweeteners work
Sweet topic. It was reviewed in the last NatGeo Mag. Among other things, it discussed how sugar came into our society historically, and evolutionary speaking. Keep researching, this is a long story and a very important one...
Brown sugar was previously unrefined sugar, or just partially refined.
Today it's completely refined sugar where they ad back the stuff lost in the refining process...
Holy! This guy should be an auctioneer! Right at the end he talks so fast!
Please do one on the science of having a slow and fast metabolism pleaseeee
excelent toppic & video. Thanks!
Great episode Hank! :D
They can control moisture levels and crystal size to make most sugars, the others are ground to size. The colour is dirt. Shocking trip to the refinery at age 6, white only for me ever since!
I have two questions. Feel free to chime in if you know! First, Hank kept giving examples of how much sweeter some artificial sweeteners are to sugar, "sucralose is 600 times sweeter." What is the science of measuring sweetness? How would one even get the number 600? Second, what does the manufacturer cut stevia with to lessen the sweetness? I hope I explained my questions well enough to be answered. Thanks to anyone that can help!
Just a blind guess here, but maybe it's similar to how we measure how spicy a chilli pepper is? a ghost pepper is more than a hundred times(if i remember correctly) more spicy than Jalapenos, and we don't burn alive eating a ghost pepper so maybe 600 times higher in a scale of some sort? kinda like Scoville scale for spicy level.
Stevia extract (when not used as a liquid) is cut with dextrose and/or maltodextrin. Coca-Cola's "Truvia" is different. Since they could not patent the stevia plant itself they created a patentable process to isolate one of its components. This is then cut with erythritol, a sugar alcohol derived from corn. Unfortunately the part of the stevia plant they isolated has a bitter aftertaste, so vanllin is added to mask it. Fine for cola but it leaves a noticeable artificial vanilla flavor in other foods.
I'm just guessing here but I think it has something to do with bliss point and the average quantity it takes for the population to get there. Honestly- I'm just talking out my ads. Does anyone have an actual answer?
There's a device called a refractometer that determines the sugar content of liquids.
www.homebrewstuff.com/refractometer-how-to
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brix
It's a good idea to know how much sweeter an additive is than sucrose (which is the standard/control the other sweeteners are compared to). Knowing that sucralose is 600x sweeter will make you, or at least should make you, use less because it takes a smaller amount of sucralose to equal the same sweetness as sucrose.
The only way to compare them is mass human testing. Researchers increase the concentration of a sweetener until *any* change in taste is detectable by subjects. That is called the "threshold value" and is what they use to compare sweetness.
Well, yes. I was just amused by the way Hank said it.
Interesting as always.
Stevia makes good pop. Takes a while to get used to it, but still pretty good
at the BBC series Food Hospital they say that also when you eat something with a sweetener, your brain might expect the calories and if it doesnt get it, it makes you long for calorific food more
I have migraines too, but aspartame does not affect it at all. Triggers for migraines vary considerably from person to person.
Hey Brother, very succinctly put, I love it
do you know what would be awesome? An episode about things that have been accidentally discovered, like the finger licking thing.
Right. Lasting soreness is a good sign you worked out enough that your body will be triggered to repair and generate new muscle.
The "burn" is only a good sign you're working hard though, not muscle build up. It's merely that your muscle was worked enough that all oxygen was used for aerobic energy production and, to keep moving, the cells switched to anaerobic energy production which doesn't use oxygen, but ends in by products that need to be dealt with afterwards, including lactic acid.
Great episode, Thank you :)
I'm interested in understanding why many people believe there is a link between aspartame and MS. I read something about aspartame increasing free radicals & oxidation...
thanks for your videos!
Can we get an episode on saltiness?
How many different kinds of salt are there?
What's the worlds largest salt mine?
SO MANY QUESTIONS
In terms of meat and meat products? Varies with the person, location, expenditure ect. But roughly; a serve of lean red meat 2-3 times a week, a serve of lean poultry/seafood 3-4 times a week, 2-3 serves of dairy products (milk, cheese, yogurt) a day. Eggs can also be used to replace some of your intake of protein sourced directly from animals.
This is so true thanks for educated this ppl
That's one hell of a paraphrase.
Great video Hank, thank you. Only thing I want to say it that I would have liked if you suggested looking at what other regulatory bodies have to say about artificial sweeteners, as not everyone lives in the US or feels confident about the FDA maintaining a independent science based position.