Sugar of Lead

A few months ago, the New Yorker ran an article about sugar substitutes. They listed all the new ones, aspartame, saccharin and sucralose. They considerately wasted many paragraphs on how each one differed from sugar in taste. As I recall, the author thought that none of them were satisfactory, but that a combination of them might be. This is not true, because all artificial sweetners taste like sweat.

They also covered some natural sweeteners, like stevia, that are favored by bad people. Those taste like baking soda. The reviewer didn't like those either. They were very thorough, but they didn't review that classic sweetener, lead acetate. As you may know, this was produced by Romans, who boiled wine in lead basins until it turned to syrup. The syrup was called sapa and some people think it made the ancient Romans insane. It did not.

The New Yorker did not review lead acetate. This is probably not a surprise to anybody, because it is a little poisonous, but I was disappointed anyway. It's not very poisonous. It's so non-toxic that a great civilization used it as a condiment. It is not so harmless as aspartame, but what is? Surely you can put a quarter-teaspoon of it in your mouth in relative safety. You can even spit it out if you want, afterwards. See? It's not so hard.

The New Yorker is supposed to be on top of these things. If they're not going to tell us what lead acetate tastes like, who is? Not me. I would make it myself, and report back to you, (when the real reporters are not doing their jobs, you turn to me) but where do you even get lead? They don't make shot out of it any more. Or pipes. Can you go to Home Depot and buy sheets of lead? I'm not sure why they would sell it. They would probably give your name to the FBI, who would think you were trying to commit clumsy terrorism.

I'm going to save us all the trouble and just guess. Sugar of lead tastes like holding a penny all day, then putting sugar on your hand and licking it off. You heard it here first.