The Finger-Licking History Of Artificial Sweeteners

Yahoo

04-02-2025

For dieters, diabetics, and Diet Coke fanatics alike, there is perhaps no food-related scientific discovery of the last 200 years more important than artificial sweeteners. Once hailed as a group of miracle chemicals with all the sweetness of cane sugar yet no calories or negative side effects, artificial sweeteners are still incredibly popular today, but concerns about their health effects have grown.
These days, you're most likely to see saccharin, sucralose, Ace-K, and aspartame used in diet and zero-sugar sodas, coffee additives, and sugar-free desserts, but once upon a time, many of the most common sweeteners on the market began as accidental lab discoveries by unsuspecting chemists.
It all started with saccharin, which was discovered in 1878 and has been sold as a sugar replacement since the late 19th century. Amazingly, the chemist who first discovered saccharin's sweet taste did so by mistake, after tasting a residue on his fingers after a day of working in a lab with coal tar derivatives. Even more amazingly, both aspartame and cyclamate (the original compound used in Sweet'N Low) were discovered in a similar manner. These discoveries were instrumental in changing the course of food history as we know it.
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In 1878, two scientists named Ira Remsen and Constantin Fahlberg were working together at a John Hopkins University lab researching the oxidation of methylated sulfobenzoic acids and their amides, also known as coal tar derivatives. That probably doesn't mean a whole lot to those of us who haven't studied chemistry, but the most important outcome of their research was the accidental discovery of saccharin after Fahlberg tasted it on his hands at dinner one night. He eventually secured patents and began selling it commercially in the 1880s as the first known substitute for sugar, that much-beloved but unfortunately unhealthy sweetening agent.
Unlike sugar, saccharin is not metabolized by the body and thus has no caloric content, despite being about 500 times sweeter than sucrose. When Fahlberg first tested the sweetener on himself, he found no adverse reactions to its consumption, but in the early 20th century, public concerns over food safety mounted. In response, the United States passed the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906. But when FDA commissioner Harvey Washington Wiley attempted to ban saccharin, he was shot down by President Theodore Roosevelt, who himself had been prescribed the sweetener as a weight-loss regimen.
In the decades that followed, so did a longstanding debate about the scientific evidence of saccharin's potential harmfulness, which was repeatedly deemed inconclusive. Saccharin was a common sugar substitute during wartime when sugar was scarce, but its prominence exploded in the mid-20th century when upticks in both health consciousness and prepackaged food consumption among Americans led to the creation of diet sodas, which became a popular drink of choice.
The next artificial sweetener to hit the market was cyclamate, discovered in 1937 by a graduate student at the University of Illinois named Michael Sveda. Sveda was trying to create a new fever-reducing drug when, during a smoke break, he tasted a sweet substance on his fingers much like Fahlberg back in 1878.
Cyclamate is only about 30 to 50 times sweeter than sugar but lacks the bitter aftertaste of saccharin, and the two were often used in combination, such as in packets of Sweet'N Low or in the formula of now-discontinued diet sodas like Coca-Cola's TaB. However, in the 1960s, studies linked cyclamate to the development of bladder cancer in rats, and in 1970 the FDA banned the substance as a potential carcinogenic, though it's still approved for use in Europe.
In 1965, aspartame entered the field when researcher James Schlatter discovered yet another sweet taste after licking his fingers while working on an anti-ulcer drug. Two hundred times sweeter than sugar with almost zero caloric value, aspartame was approved for large-scale production in 1981 and quickly became the hot new sweetener of choice, particularly once it was marketed as NutraSweet and used to make Diet Coke. Like the other sweeteners, its safety and carcinogenic potential remain controversial, but aspartame is currently considered safe with an acceptable daily intake (ADI) limit.
Since the late 20th century, more new sweeteners have entered the market, including sucralose, best known as Splenda, which was discovered in 1976 (more purposefully this time). It has since overtaken aspartame to become the most commercially popular artificial sweetener.
Read the original article on Chowhound.