That sound you hear? Angels singing!

You see, my lovely wife just brought home a box of something I thought I would never find here; Israeli Splenda®.  OK, it isn't really Splenda (they still stubbornly market to everywhere in the middle east except Israel), but rather a Sucralose product under the brand name; Sucralite.

To be fair, there has been a sucrolose product called Sucradiet available here in Israel for a couple of years now, but it was priced out of all proportion to the other artificial sweeteners here.  Also, I know it shouldn't matter, but the packaging was so horrible (a brown and tan color scheme that was completely unappetizing) that I often used the 'fizzy-pill' style Israeli sweeteners rather than have to look at this expensive stuff in the crappy packaging.

I don't know if it was pure greed or if the start-up, marketing and approval costs for Sucradiet were reflected in the astronomical price... but even after we noticed it on the shelves here, we continued to have friends bring back Costco-sized boxes of Splenda over from the states rather than having to perform a cost-benefit analysis every time we wanted to open a packet of the expensive Israeli stuff.

Anyway, getting back to the choir of angels singing... it now appears that someone finally got smart and realized that only millionaires and the odd Hebrew-fluent tourists were buying Sucradiet, and have come out with a Splenda look/taste-alike called Sucralite.  I'm sure it's no coincidence that the packaging is even the familiar sunny yellow packets with blue type that Splenda junkies instinctively reach for.

   

So, the good news is that I can now scratch one more thing off of the list of things I 'need' to have muled in from the old country. 

Oh sure, I'm still planning on popping into CVS for a buying spree on my next trip to the states.  After all, even though there are plenty of perfectly good Israeli products for everything that could ail a family member, there is something very comforting about reaching for the tried-and-true brand names with which I was raised when someone  I love has a cold... a scratch... or an allergic rash.

Now if only I could get a decent Bourbon here...