Which one of the following artificial sweeteners is modified sugar ?

Sucralose is the artificial sweetener that is a modified sugar. Chemically, it is a trichlorinated derivative of sucrose, the common table sugar [2]. The production process involves the selective chlorination of sucrose, where three hydroxyl (OH) groups are replaced by three chlorine atoms. This modification results in a compound that is approximately 600 to 650 times sweeter than its parent sugar molecule while remaining stable under various processing conditions [2]. In contrast, other options like aspartame and alitame are dipeptide-based sweeteners composed of amino acids such as aspartic acid and phenylalanine [1]. Saccharin is a sulfonamide derivative of toluene and is considered the oldest artificial sweetener. Therefore, only sucralose is directly derived from and structurally resembles a natural sugar molecule.

Sources

1. [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3982014/
2. [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/sweetener