Meg
Message 1 of 1
At Big Sur Lodge in California, the blue jays were robbing the table, especially the sugar bowl. They would take the regular sugar, the pink Sweet 'N Low packets, but when they grabbed a blue packet of Equal, they would tear it open and immediately drop it. Someone watching this at the next table told me he had heard that Equal contains a chemical sweetener also used in soft drinks. Apparently this chemical transforms at high temperatures into formaldehyde or something similar to formaldehyde. Of course it wasn't in a quantity that would significantly alter the taste, but it is not good for living things. He said he had read an article linking Equal to Gulf War Syndrome, that during the Gulf War enormous pallets of soft drinks would be left on the desert in the broiling sun. The soldiers drank quantities of soft drinks to replace liquid lost in the heat. This sounds completely bizarre, but stranger things have happened in the annals of chemistry, and I want to know if anyone else knows or has heard of or read about this. If so, will you please respond to this email? The only thing I know for sure is that the bluejays at Big Sur know something about Equal that we mere humans don't notice. I've never used Equal and will definitely avoid it in future after seeing the birds' selectivity.