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[choco_tuxedo]

i made a post here yesterday reguarding low calorie cupcakes. i was thinking a white premade cake mix with a can of diet 7up and an egg white. as far as frosting goes, i'm going to mash up rasberries into cool whip free or lite or whatever it's called. yay or nay?
i'll be sure to post pictures. thanks so much!

Comments

[br0ken_dolly]

wow, i've never heard of this before! i just spent teh last couple hours reading up on it!

so okay, apparently aspartame (nutrasweet) in soda pop (or anything) will break down when heated and one of the byproducts is formaldehyde. this would be true for any cooking done with nutrasweet, really, not just a reaction in cupcake ingredients. (yuck.)

the safer ones to use are sodas with splenda as the sweetener, since splenda has a different chemical composition (for what it's worth, it's a chlorinated compound, which is going to be a lot harder to break down at normal oven temps). while there isn't a lot of long-term study of sucralose/splenda, i think current studies (and my own chemistry background!) are confident enough to say that splenda is a MUCH safer alternative.

however, to alleviate any current fears (including my own because i seriously just made diet root beer cupcakes this morning before i saw your comment and got worried!), a few cupcakes aren't going to be the end of the world for our livers. studies show that our bodies can convert aspartame to formaldehyde all on its own, so us regular diet soda drinkers are going to be exposed to far more in a few cans of soda than in a few cupcakes made with one can of soda. (more reason to switch to splenda, eh?)

also, the nutrasweet website claims that baked goods may lose some sweetness upon baking (they don't say why, of course), but they are safe to eat.

also (again), formaldehyde is very volatile, which means that (hopefully) as its formed in something like cupcakes ~350F, it would be volatilized and evaporated out of the cakes as they bake. (which is how i think the nutrasweet company can say its safe to eat.)

whew! sorry to be so wordy. i just wanted to post my findings! thanks for pointing this out tho. i learned a lot for a sunday!

[jenri]

Very interesting about the body converting it naturally!! I thought it only switched over at higher temps than our body could naturally produce. ^__^

You really did learn a lot for a sunday!! :3