As I read about nutrition for the fun of it, today I was reading about sucralose on Wikipedia, because I had found it in the ingredients of my hot chocolate, and wanted to know what exactly I was eating. Sucralose is basically the same sugar molecule, but modified to have three chlorides instead of three of the hydroxyl groups. Funnily, sucralose was discovered in 1976 when one lab worker told another to test the substance, but he heard taste.

This lead me to investigate into some of the other artificial sweeteners, including aspartame. Aspartame, commonly found in diet sodas, is made out of two amino acids- phenylalanine and aspartic acid (therefore, people who have phenylketonuria can not eat this).

Sucralose is 600 times sweeter than is sugar, and aspartame 200 times.

While reading more about aspartic acid, (an amino acid that also functions as a neurotrasmitter), I also ended up reading about something interesting called GLAST.