Yikes! The promotional material has been carefully crafted. Splenda - it's made from sugar. It's supposedly natural. This is the implication even though we know NutraSweet (aspartame) is toxic (if you didn't know that, go to this link - I have an extensive page as to why you need to avoid this neurotoxin - www.berglundcenter.com/nutrasweet.html).
Look at wikipedia's chemical structure for Splenda (sucralose). It's terrible. It's anything but natural. Do you know what organic chemistry is? It's the study of a lot chemicals like formaldehyde, ether, chloroform, etc. It's a lot of carcinogens. Having briefly said that, the makers of Splenda (sucralose) use sugar and then (POOF!) twenty-two organic chemistry steps later, you have Splenda (sucralose). Yeah…that's "natural".
I've heard other people say that they heard that it's a sugar molecule with just a chlorine molecule on it, like salt or sodium chloride. OK…well first that's wrong. But even if that were right, it can't be like sodium chloride because when sodium chloride goes into the stomach and mixes with water or acid, the sodium and the chloride break up and get absorbed as separate compounds. So if sucrose (or table sugar) just has a chloride atom attached to it like salt, then once it gets to the stomach it would break apart into sugar and chloride ions, and it would go from being NON-caloric to having the same amount of calories as table sugar because what was absorbing WOULD be table sugar.
So what's the harm? Well this is going to be trickier than NutraSweet (aspartame). That toxic sweetener broke down into methanol, which then broke down into formaldehyde, which is a toxic material to the brain if not further broken down in the liver and eliminated. Some people are able to eliminate before it does any (or minimal) damage. However, Splenda (sucralose) may create more problems because its chemical structure looks more like a pesticide or DDT or dioxin than a food, which is why it makes such a good non-caloric sweetener because the body has NOTHING digestive that can break it down into something less toxic. It has to wait until the body absorbs it from the gastrointestinal tract into the blood stream to see if the liver and kidney can possibly eliminate it from the body.
The reason I say this is tricky is because none of us can FEEL cancer forming in our bodies. And since pesticide poisoning, DDT and dioxin are all potent carcinogens with enough exposure, once our society gets enough exposure to Splenda (sucralose) to SHOW significant statistical data of its toxicity, we will have a lot of us human guinea pigs with cancer and there will be a lot of deaths before we acknowledge that this chemical is maybe not a "food" and shouldn't be ingested.
Here's my thing: I believe that we need to stop trying to find chemicals to add to our foods. Food is made by the hands of the Almighty. It doesn't come as a mistake from a chemistry experiment (see Mercola's book, Sweet Deception). It comes as part of a divine plan for health. We also need to look at eating foods as God prepared for us (read What the Bible Says About Healthy Living by Dr. Rex Russell). Avoid the refined (adulterated) carbohydrates like white flour (processed from wheat), white sugar (table sugar), and corn syrup (high fructose corn syrup) for a start. Find out if you are sensitive to other grains or dairy products (due to man changing it by pasteurizing and homogenizing it). Sensitivities to these foods can cause a number of diseases.