When I was ten, our home was in Otego, New York, but I attended
school in Oneonta. I’d ride there with Daddy in the morning, then walk to his
office after school. I did homework while waiting for him to take me home. I “read”
Emil und die Detektive and Der kleine Prinz by looking up each
word in his German/English dictionary. Once, only once, I was allowed in the chemistry
lab, to see how sugar crystals formed. Daddy caught me licking the glass stirring
rod after I’d dissolved sugar in water in a beaker. He laughed, but said
terrible things could happen to chemists who sipped their experiments. Not long
after that, a researcher with Tate & Lyle did just that. He was told to “test”
a chlorinated sugar compound, and he thought he heard the word “taste.” He did so,
and found it to be extremely sweet. And that’s how Sucralose – Splenda – came into
being.
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