Comment by teslabox | Hacker News Reader

Comment by teslabox | Hacker News Reader

Saccharin was the first artificial sweetener, discovered in 1879. It was popular in the early 20th century, and is available today as Sweet'n'Low or "the pink packet" (generics). The chemical has an advocacy group: https://saccharin.org/ - the latest news is that Canadians can now use saccharin too (2016). Walmart and Amazon have boxes of bulk sweet'n'low for baking/etc.

~4 weeks ago I reposted a submission about Aspartame: Aspartame aggravates atherosclerosis through insulin-triggered inflammation (sciencedirect.com) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43313574

My comment tried to put saccharin, aspartame, acesulfame potassium and sucralose into context. Aspartame is not heat stable, so it's often combined with acesulfame-K. The diet soda industry standardized on aspartame in the 1980's because saccharin has a metallic aftertaste. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43313575

I think saccharin is probably the safest of all the artificial sweeteners. Stevia and monk fruit extracts (herbal sweeteners) are probably okay too, as long as you're not allergic to them.

If you want to try saccharin-sweetened beverages, I've noticed that zero sugar tonic waters at my local grocery store (brand name and generic) use saccharin.

One important thing to mention about the history of saccharin is that it was the subject of a big scare in the 70s and 80s because rat studies showed it caused cancer. Later research revealed that the link between saccharin and cancer was much more tenuous in humans than originally suggested, and the sweetener is generally considered safe today.

When I was a kid in the 70s, our pantry had a bottle of saccharine tablets that my folks would use to sweeten their coffee. They were tiny, not big tablets, more like round little pills. They had an uncanny resemblance to a popular breath mint product.

A common prank was to put some saccharine pills in one of those mint dispensers, walk up to a sibling and asked if they wanted one while putting a real mint in your mouth. They'd take one of the fake mints, put it in their mouth, and half a second later curse you as they ran to the sink to spit it out.

I still have a little bottle of those, sold under the brand "Aids".

All these artificial sweeteners taste terrible to me. A very "chemical" taste and especially smell to all of them, reminds me of insecticide. For carbonated beverages, I prefer plain carbonated water, though sometimes I will buy a flavored (but unsweetened) variety.

I've settled on no sugar or under 3g of sugar for this reason. They all taste weird to me. Monk fruit, stevia, aspartame, saccharin, allulose, sucralose. All of them.

They taste weird to me too but I'm not convinced it's an absolute quality rather than just unfamiliarity

My problem with monk fruit extracts is that they tend to be full of erythritol (even listing them as the first ingredient [0]), which tends to wreck my stomach. I was in a super market once and not a single product on the shelf was pure monk fruit.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/RAW-Natural-Sweetener-Erythritol-Suga...

I think they’re using erythritol because it’s not toxic to pets which some of the other sugar alcohols are, and disastrously so.

But all of the sugar alcohols can mess with your gut biome. Mine went nasty during the previous recession when I was chewing gum for TMJ related problems.

I'm confused, google says monk fruit is ok for pets. Regardless, who's feeding this stuff to their pets?

I love fishermans friend, but I think the sorbitol is guaranteed excessive flatulence.

Monkfruit doesn't come in a nice, familiar crystal form, and monkfruit extract is much sweeter per gram than sugar. For this reason, manufacturers bulk it up with some kind of sugar alcohol to make it easier to use. GP is saying they use erythritol for this purpose because the other options (e.g. xylitol) are toxic to pets.

When you live with a pet, who eats what food is a bit of a democratic affair, not an autocracy.

Do you want to get up from the middle of a movie to go to the bathroom and come back and find that you're not going to find out who killed the leading lady tonight because you're going to spend all night in an animal emergency room getting your dog or cat's stomach pumped?

Anything on a table or in your purse or your jacket pocket is fair game.

- I was chewing gum for TMJ related problems.

Why the hell would you do that? My life time of chewing gum constantly until my 20s is what I assume to be the source of my TMJ.

Grinding my teeth at night, because I wanted to murder a third of my coworkers and I didn't feel I could find another job.

I'm only quibbling here, and I agree with you, but an amusing factoid is that the ancient Romans used lead acetate as an artificial sweetener. It was made by boiling wine in a lead pot.

When I lived in Texas, it was practically universal to open up a cup of iced tea, grab several packs of Sweet'n'Low, rip the tops off all at once, and pour them in.

With Sweet’n’Low?! Isn’t that considered blasphemy in sweet tea country?

That's a good question, and I'm culturally ignorant. When I lived in Texas, my impression was that "tea" was unsweetened iced tea, to which people added their own sweetener. Then when I visited Virginia, "tea" was heavily sweetened.

My friend told me that drinking coffee with a meal instantly identified me as a Midwesterner.

> I think saccharin is probably the safest of all the artificial sweeteners. Stevia and monk fruit extracts (herbal sweeteners) are probably okay too, as long as you're not allergic to them.

No, isomaltulose(a.k.a Palatinose) is the best. Not very sweet, but it's literally just glucose and fructose connected differently, no other off-products or metabolic consequences, just a sweet carbohydrate with slow metabolism that doesn't cause cavities and is beneficial to the gut microbiota due to the slow release of sugar, just like a good resistant starch would.

It's not as sweet, low calorie, or inexpensive, but health-wise forget being harmless, it's outright better than almost all other carbs.

Google Gemini is telling me:

"Saccharin is absorbed primarily in the stomach, with about 85% to 95% of ingested saccharin absorbed and eliminated in the urine."

If this is the case, then why hasn't the antibiotic effect been previously observed in vivo?

Is the concentration too low?

Xylitol is probably safer, and it also kills smutans.

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