The Sweetest Thing

Charles Zucker (0:02)

Oh, wait, you're listening. Okay.

SPEAKER_2 (0:08)

You are listening to Radiolab. Radiolab.

Charles Zucker (0:11)

From?

Paul Breslin (0:12)

WNYC.

Lulu Miller (0:18)

All right, so, Latif.

Linda Bartoszek (0:19)

Yep.

Lulu Miller (0:20)

What are we doing today?

Latif Nasser (0:22)

We're going to go on a hunt.

Linda Bartoszek (0:23)

All right.

Latif Nasser (0:24)

That actually starts in my car.

Linda Bartoszek (0:27)

All right.

Latif Nasser (0:27)

I was with my two kids. I think at that point, my kids were six and three maybe.

The U2 song, The Sweetest Thing comes on. Do you know that song?

Lulu Miller (0:39)

Of course.

Paul Breslin (0:44)

Yeah, of course. It's a bop.

Latif Nasser (0:46)

Yeah. It's my favorite of their songs. My kids who have never heard the song before, they're listening to the song and they ask, what is the sweetest thing?

Lulu Miller (0:57)

Did you try love? Were you like love?

Latif Nasser (0:59)

Yeah. No. My kids, they don't care about that. They were just like, no, but what really is the sweetest thing?

Lulu Miller (1:04)

So just what's the sweetest thing I can get in my mouth?

Latif Nasser (1:06)

Yeah. They're kids. They love sugar.

Lulu Miller (1:08)

Yeah, of course.

Latif Nasser (1:09)

Right now, they're obsessed with gummy bears and they just wanted to know, is there some other thing out there we've never had before that's even sweeter? So I figured like, I'm a journalist. I can answer this.

Lulu Miller (1:22)

Well, Latif, bless your amazing children who I adore. Do you care about this question?

Latif Nasser (1:29)

Yeah. Yes.

Lulu Miller (1:31)

Why?

Latif Nasser (1:32)

Because, okay, because it sounds like a dumb, simple question.

Lulu Miller (1:35)

Or not a dumb question, but it seems like it has an answer. And then you're like, son.

Latif Nasser (1:38)

I kind of expected it would be that way too, but then this question turned out to be so much more. More than just a hunt for like a substance, it became like this thing where I was trying to get to the edge of human experience. And sweetness as one of those experiences, it's this basic familiar thing that we all know. It's like almost mundane. But I kept finding that, wait a second, like, no, no, no, no. The edge is even further to these levels of sweetness that I didn't even know existed in the first place.

And there's some mind hacks and brain lasers and space raspberries. There's a lot of fun stuff along the way.

Lulu Miller (2:22)

All right. All right. Let's go.

Latif Nasser (2:24)

Okay. All right. So the very first thing that I found right off the bat, I found all these scientists. Check, check, check.

Eric Walters (2:32)

Okay.

Latif Nasser (2:32)

Hey, okay.

Eric Walters (2:34)

Hello.

Latif Nasser (2:34)

Who are out there trying to answer rigorously scientifically this exact kid question.

Eric Walters (2:41)

My name is Eric Walters.

Latif Nasser (2:42)

Can I call you Eric?

Eric Walters (2:43)

Please do. You don't have to doctor me.

Latif Nasser (2:45)

Like Eric here, a biochemist who used to work at NutriSweet, where he developed artificial sweeteners.

Eric Walters (2:51)

I spent a lot of my career working on sweeteners, studying sweeteners and ultimately writing a book about sweeteners.

Latif Nasser (2:57)

And what scientists like Eric in the food industry do is they find or even make new sweet molecules.

Eric Walters (3:06)

Yeah. Yeah. Tweaking the structure in small ways and seeing, does it get better or worse?

Latif Nasser (3:11)

And then they literally rank them in terms of sweetness. Yeah. And they keep like a list of the sweetest things on earth.

Lulu Miller (3:18)

Oh.

Latif Nasser (3:18)

And I want to walk you up my top five of the list, using table sugar as our baseline here.

Eric Walters (3:24)

Because that's the most common sugar that we use every day.

Lulu Miller (3:28)

Okay, great.

Latif Nasser (3:29)

So, number five, honey. You know honey.

Lulu Miller (3:35)

Heard of it?

Latif Nasser (3:35)

Honey is about 1.5 times sweeter than sugar.

Lulu Miller (3:38)

Which what does that mean? It's just, what does that mean?

Eric Walters (3:42)

So typically in the food industry, people do this with trained taste panels.

Latif Nasser (3:46)

These specialized taste testers who are really good at noticing differences in sweetness.

Eric Walters (3:51)

I haven't done it in years, but I used to be very good at it.

Latif Nasser (3:53)

And here's what they generally do. They take a little sugar.

Eric Walters (3:56)

One gram of sugar.

Latif Nasser (3:58)