First, there was sugar and high-fructose corn syrup, the original industrial sweeteners.

They were cheap but had lots of empty calories and contributed to diseases such as obesity, type 2 diabetes,

cavities, and metabolic syndrome.

So then came the second-generation sweeteners, the artificial sweeteners, the colored pastel packets,

Nutri-Sweetened, Splenda, Sweeten Lobe Practically zero calories, but adverse effects have been described.

Cautions have been raised.

For example, artificial sweeteners were found to induce glucose intolerance

by altering the gut microbiome, thereby producing the counterintuitive effect

of inducing metabolic derangements.

They also taste kind of funny.

Enter the third-generation sweeteners, sugar alcohols, such as sorbitol, xylitol, and

erythritol, low-calorie sweeteners, however, their laxative effects can create difficulties,

which brings us to rare sugars like alulose, which are natural

sweeteners with low or zero calories and a sugar-like taste.

For those of you who haven't heard of alulose, it's been through a bit of rebranding,

just like rapeseed oil morphed into canola, forcing municipalities to update their town slogans.

Agulos used to be called Psychos, a sugar you may not want to eat in the shower.

The name Psychos is derived from the antibiotic from which it was isolated.

That's a strange origin story for a sweetener.

In the frontiers of bioengineering and biotechnology, emphasis is placed on the fact that

allulose is a real and natural sugar rather than artificial.

But ironically, if you look at a reference they cite, it talks about how

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